Sundress Publications announces the release of SG Huerta’s Burns. In poems that capture the complexity of life as a transitioning Xicanx in a tumultuous Texas climate, SG Huerta’s Burns balances the intrinsically human need for connection with the struggle to love oneself.
Vivid images of half-empty bottles of testosterone gel and charred vegan grilled cheese form the backdrop for explorations of identity, orientation, grief, and an absent father across the full landscape of what it means to live. Embedded in a complicated family and pressures of assimilation, Huerta straddles liminal spaces with these poems: “I want to write / a queer poem without his ghost / reading it over my shoulder.” Through sonnets, stream-of-consciousness, and lyrical narratives, Burns balances internal conflict and societal expectation. Anyone who has overshared with a cashier out of longing for a flash of acknowledgment across another’s face will know the unresolved grief, love, and limitless self-discovery smoldering throughout Burns.
Cecily Parks, author of The Seeds, writes that “Burns might be the most tender manifesto I’ve ever encountered … The poems in SG Huerta’s first full-length collection announce the arrival of an important new voice in American poetry … These poems will break your heart with their defiant beauty, like the wildflowers that grow on scarred earth after a fire.”
SG Huerta, a Xicanx writer, is the poetry editor of Abode Press, a Roots.Wounds.Words. fellow, and a Tin House alum. The author of two poetry chapbooks and the nonfiction chapbook GOOD GRIEF (fifth wheel press, 2025), their work has appeared in Honey Literary and elsewhere. Find them at sghuertawriting.com.
