Cecilia Savala Reviews C.T. Salazar’s Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking

The knowing tone of C.T. Salazar’s debut, Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking, reaches readers on a variety of planes. Through the masterful manipulation of formal poetry and the direct address of Southern Baptist mores, Salazar’s speaker weaves a way through strict religious teachings to a place that’s more personal and sympathetic but simultaneously, take me as I am. The tension among the church, the familial, and the self is strongly portrayed throughout but especially in lines like, “You undress / me of my apologies and say I / look better without them,” and, in the almost titular poem, “Self-Portrait as John the Baptist Hitchhiking,” the speaker’s “When blood flows from the neck, the body / looks like an uncorked bottle // but maybe this leaves more room for salvation…” pulls the reader out of their body and into the speaker’s pursuit of purity. The skill with which Salazar handles such unspoken topics is both reverent and sensual. The language and forced intimacy of Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking are at the same time knowing and necessary. Salazar writes into the white space, heaving anxiety and emotion into line breaks and breaths, as in “Six Ecclesiastical Love Songs”:

::: 

heaven is a compound 

but not the one we’re in 

we were called heathens in another myth 

and “The Mouse Speaks:” 

you wouldn’t think me starlike but a star 

is only as big as the god whose black skin 

it shines against don’t you see I live 

by not being … 

In this collection, Salazar forces his reader ceremoniously into the mythology of the Biblical South. He guts guilt and faith and wrenches solemnity from sex and violence of that domain and into that of a more tender embrace. In “Barnburner,” Salazar’s speaker demands, 

The next time you put faith in anything, remember when 

the wind blows, the barn sings until it runs out of breath. 

Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking will take your breath, and your head, with it.

Cecilia Savala is a Latinx poet, originally from the Midwest, writing from the desert of Tempe, AZ, where she serves as an associate poet editor of Hayden’s Ferry Review. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Mochila Review, The Boiler Journal, and Swamp Ape Review, among others.