In Short – Issue 4 (Winter 2026)

January 31, 2026

Image credit: KJ Hannah Greenberg

Livin’ La Vida Pocha

By Andrew Careaga

They don’t know my secret.

They don’t know who I am.

Because of the way I pronounce my surname. Anglicized and sanitized, the way our father taught us to. So that it would maybe sound Italian, a more respectable lineage than our own.

Because of my skin. It is like light olives, but darker in summer. But not as dark as people around here expect it to be. Not that caramel mocha color of the men repairing the roofs of our town after the tornados and hailstorms wrecked them.

Because of my voice, the drawl of a man who was once a kid from a small Missouri railroad town. Not the thick accents and clipped speech of the Mexican or Salvadoran men who prepare the food and wash the dishes at the restaurant down the street.

Because I no hablo Español. (But I took a year of Spanish in high school and got an A.)

Because I can’t hold my tequila. Or at least I couldn’t hold it last time I drank it, in college.

Because I’ve never had a margarita. I prefer gin and tonic.

Because I prefer the mild picante sauce with my chips.

Because my sisters never had quinceañeras.

Because our family never celebrated Dia de los Muertos. But we did celebrate my birthday every November 1.

Because why should it matter if that blood is coursing through my veins? If my DNA is encoded with that ancient life?

Because soy gringo.

I’m too American to be Mexican, or even Mexican American. Or Chicano, or Latino.

The only vestige of my heritage is my name. Everything else has been lost, discarded, or diluted like a dash of pepper in a kettle of Campbell’s chicken soup.

Andrew Careaga is a retired marketing and public relations practitioner whose fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction have appeared in The Argyle, Club Plum, Frazzled Lit, MoonLit Getaway, The Orange Rose, Roi Fainéant, Spillwords, and elsewhere. He lives in Rolla, Missouri.