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Catrachos: Poems
The breathtaking debut collection from one of America’s most inventive new poets
A name for the people of Honduras, Catrachos is a term of solidarity and resilience. In these unflinching, riveting poems, Roy G. Guzmán reaches across borders—between life and death and between countries—invoking the voices of the lost. Part immigration narrative, part elegy, and part queer coming-of-age story, Catrachos finds its own religion in fantastic figures such as the X-Men, pop singers, and the “Queerodactyl,” which is imagined in a series of poems as a dinosaur sashaying in the shadow of an oncoming comet, insistent on surviving extinction. With exceptional energy, humor, and inventiveness, Guzmán’s debut is a devastating display of lyrical and moral complexity—an introduction to an immediately captivating, urgently needed voice.
A name for the people of Honduras, Catrachos is a term of solidarity and resilience. In these unflinching, riveting poems, Roy G. Guzmán reaches across borders—between life and death and between countries—invoking the voices of the lost. Part immigration narrative, part elegy, and part queer coming-of-age story, Catrachos finds its own religion in fantastic figures such as the X-Men, pop singers, and the “Queerodactyl,” which is imagined in a series of poems as a dinosaur sashaying in the shadow of an oncoming comet, insistent on surviving extinction. With exceptional energy, humor, and inventiveness, Guzmán’s debut is a devastating display of lyrical and moral complexity—an introduction to an immediately captivating, urgently needed voice.
113 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 5, 2020
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731 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
July 1, 2020
This collection of poems has a level of density to it that may be off putting for some readers. I would encourage you to find a video, like this one of the poet reading, because I do think it shows the pacing in his mind of some of the wall of text style poems. The Queerodactyl series and others are more snappy, and the poem about the Orlando shooting had me in tears (it isn't the only poem about a massacre....)
The other layer of density comes from the poems and poets his poems are in conversation with, so this is another collection for which to read the acknowledgements carefully and closely. There is cultural density, with Guzmán born and raised in Honduras but then navigating various parts of the USA - themes of difference, borders, immigration, multilingual, code switching, alongside queer identity - it's all here.
The other layer of density comes from the poems and poets his poems are in conversation with, so this is another collection for which to read the acknowledgements carefully and closely. There is cultural density, with Guzmán born and raised in Honduras but then navigating various parts of the USA - themes of difference, borders, immigration, multilingual, code switching, alongside queer identity - it's all here.
May 23, 2020
I have so much to say and I doubt it will be useful to anyone. To read poems with references like Cantiflas, Bidi bidi bom bom, with deep knowledge of Miami, where queerness is as central to the Latinx experience as the Spanglish in “Colores/Drones” from “Self-Portrait...”, to see the complex and sincere portrayal of parents who sacrifice everything because they love you but they don’t love you enough to watch you be in love, all this and more filled my heart. I get in poetry what I often lose in fiction: an unapologetic portrayal of experiences so specific you can savor them again and again like an old tender memory.
June 24, 2020
This collection shows such a passion for language. There's pain and heartbreak, but this is countered with a fiery aliveness, defiant and heard. I love that the voice in these poems is so powerfully unique and unapologetic. These aren't easy poems in the sense that I could probably read this book over and over and continually find new meanings and understanding. I'm honestly not smart enough nor experienced enough to fully grasp all that's going on. But while they don't drop easily into my world, when they do hit square on, they leave a crater. It's beautiful.
December 7, 2020
Roy G. Guzmán's work always makes me feel awash in rich, vibrant language. Their stunning debut collection of poetry, Catrachos is no exception. Described as being “part immigration narrative, part elegy, and part queer coming-of-age story,” this powerful collection blends pop culture, humor, with Guzmán’s cultural experience to explore life, death, and borders both real and imaginary.
I recently interviewed Guzmán about their new book, which is now up on the New Books in Poetry podcast.
Here’s a sample of Guzmán’s writing from the book:
“It is not a fallacy that the pulpería owner who wakes up
dressed in a tunic of warriors’ pelos, or the milkman
pressing his rough hands against the cow’s tectonic body,
remembers the skirted boy with an ovarian lipstick for a tongue,
the boy who offered a tenth of his knees to the teeth
of a country with dentures.”
— from “Finding Logic in a Crushed Head”
I recently interviewed Guzmán about their new book, which is now up on the New Books in Poetry podcast.
Here’s a sample of Guzmán’s writing from the book:
“It is not a fallacy that the pulpería owner who wakes up
dressed in a tunic of warriors’ pelos, or the milkman
pressing his rough hands against the cow’s tectonic body,
remembers the skirted boy with an ovarian lipstick for a tongue,
the boy who offered a tenth of his knees to the teeth
of a country with dentures.”
— from “Finding Logic in a Crushed Head”
May 12, 2020
This is my favorite poetry book of 2020. I'm a pretty slow reader in general and in particular, with poetry: this book I finished as quickly as I could, taking breaks only to process the emotional impact of the poems. Guzmán does such a beautiful job creating poems that are visually compelling and aurally stunning (read some out loud; the language is music!) while presenting complicated personal and political histories, expertly intersected. It's a book about longing and hope, the distances between memory and being, about the limits of language as points of connection and untranslatability, about queerness and love. These poems reminded me why I love poetry.
April 26, 2020
I've really been looking forward to this collection. I was so honored to feature a poem in Superstition Review and I'll never forget the packet coming in to submissions, and discussing it with the editors. It was literally one of the most exciting submissions we had seen in many cycles and we were so honored to feature the work. This collection is chock full of image, honesty, bravery, and care. I feel these poems so viscerally. I love how the language twists and turns and leads me to so many unexpected places. I love the family, the humanity, the settings, the agency. And oh my goodness the endings! Each one earned and singing and ringing like a bell. I'm a huge fan. Some of my favorite moments:
Geometry went defunct, went apparel, berserk, bull in jeans, torero.
In one corner, the emptiness
they call Father. In every other:
spilled blood.
I trusted servitude before belief, the fires that cavalcade without pageant.
My absence is a faithful guest of honor.
Roosters have yet to birthmark their morning
in another country.
Haven’t we already gambled our future kingdom—& lost?
They are not looking
for brown minds but brown war machines, my stepfather says.
how tenderly my mother paired the socks & tied them by the neck.
I almost evolved in cinders.
Ask me where to find need. I am ringmaster of my own sinkings.
The baby’s father has left the produce of his exile.
I have seen children hoard entire nations of giants for a peek at the night sky.
Geometry went defunct, went apparel, berserk, bull in jeans, torero.
In one corner, the emptiness
they call Father. In every other:
spilled blood.
I trusted servitude before belief, the fires that cavalcade without pageant.
My absence is a faithful guest of honor.
Roosters have yet to birthmark their morning
in another country.
Haven’t we already gambled our future kingdom—& lost?
They are not looking
for brown minds but brown war machines, my stepfather says.
how tenderly my mother paired the socks & tied them by the neck.
I almost evolved in cinders.
Ask me where to find need. I am ringmaster of my own sinkings.
The baby’s father has left the produce of his exile.
I have seen children hoard entire nations of giants for a peek at the night sky.
June 30, 2020
i absolutely lost my shit reading this book oh my god. roy guzmán is wildly inventive and playful with language - the force of their images, narrative & ferocity with words surged through me. once i started reading this, i could not put it down until i was finished. guzmán has an uncanny ability to string the mythic, mundane & monstrous together with hypnotic cadence. i mean.... the "queerodactyl" that cites both blastoise & bukkake? i'm shook. i thank them for leading us so presciently, trusting all of us to fuck with them. this book is forever.
June 8, 2020
I love the poems in this book. "For them we learn to touch again. For them we walk home / & we are safe."
"I sleep in the wilderness, / like a fox loitering in a frozen meadow, / & I'll feed him forgiveness / if he asks."
"I sleep in the wilderness, / like a fox loitering in a frozen meadow, / & I'll feed him forgiveness / if he asks."
March 16, 2020
Such a breathtaking collection.
September 25, 2020
An incredible book by an incredible poet. Guzman's voice is an important one, and their writing is gorgeous.
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November 13, 2024Matt gave me this for my bday and finally got around to reading it! Dog-eared lots to come back to later!!!!! Thanks bestie 🙂↕️
August 29, 2021
This collection summoned new ways of thinking and new possibilities for loving, grieving, claiming, holding accountable and engaging with grace. It pulled me into its people and its truth in a way that I could not be pulled away. And the line work is, yes, exquisite.
November 28, 2020
This poetic mix of difficult topics gave me a beautiful, if often painful, window to a different world
December 30, 2021
I loved this one so much!! So many great lines.
May 31, 2020
Guzmán is a wordsmith across languages and styles. This is already the best book of my summer.
November 23, 2020
The force of talent charging this book could power cities. I am overwhelmed! It's almost too much to bear. I advise anyone picking this up to read slowly and wear dark sunglasses.
I read this twice and I haven't read it at all.
I read this twice and I haven't read it at all.
January 3, 2021
A powerful and memorable debut. Guzman's sonically deft poems often contain a beautiful synthesis of images, words, and idioms from multiple cultures and languages; and references ranging from x-men to the Catholic church. The overall effect is a sense of borderlessness within the poems and the collection as a whole. I was easily taken in by the loud, vibrant, but often tragic world contained the collection's pages. Highly recommend.
November 8, 2021
I am 57 and I'm still learning how to read and understand poetry. When reading Roy Guzmán's poetry, however, I learn so much more. I learn about grief, and longing, and language. I get to peek into other worlds and travel to other realities. His poems bring me home, to his home, where I always feel welcome, even if they are places I might never get to visit in real life, I am invited in on the page. And that, dear reader, is the true power of writing and is rendered beautifully by this masterful poet. Gracias, señor.
January 3, 2021
A surprising collection that uses language in unique ways to talk about the experience of queerness ("Queerodactyl" poems) and the immigrant experience. Isn't afraid to get experimental and come at things from a different angle or perspective.
August 6, 2020
explosive
April 18, 2023
one of the most visceral meditations in language i've ever read in a while
September 5, 2022
Catrachos is a miracle — a necessary one for anyone queer, brown, and migrant in search of a poetic lineage.
Reading this collection affirms that the Philippines is closer to Latin America historically, given our colonial pasts. Long Spanish rule that still persists through Catholism, the more recent intrusions of the US that still persists through pop-culture and our puppet goverments, and our (undocumented) trekking to the empire for a better life. Wounds look very similar.
But beside that, Roy G. Guzman nails the crux of migrant / exilic life. The world topples over, one finds oneself in an unfamiliar, unwelcoming landscape, and what is signified and what signifies it constantly shift, until language itself (as is the self) goes into a perpetual state of flux.
The poems are sonically aware of this a shifting self, a self constantly interrogated and displaced due to its otherness. Dense, maximalist, kinetic, Spanglish, these poems are nexuses of interpolations (vs. self), a hoard of different (and often, conflicting) registers — hi/lo, assimilative/immigrant, orthodox/queer, white/brown — that resist closure and comfortable conclusions.
Shoutout to Restored Mural for Orlando, Self-Portrait According to George W. Bush), In Service of Silence, When a Person Says Go Back to Your Country and a few of the Queerodactyl poems for smashing my heart. From the last Queerodactyl:
Reading this collection affirms that the Philippines is closer to Latin America historically, given our colonial pasts. Long Spanish rule that still persists through Catholism, the more recent intrusions of the US that still persists through pop-culture and our puppet goverments, and our (undocumented) trekking to the empire for a better life. Wounds look very similar.
But beside that, Roy G. Guzman nails the crux of migrant / exilic life. The world topples over, one finds oneself in an unfamiliar, unwelcoming landscape, and what is signified and what signifies it constantly shift, until language itself (as is the self) goes into a perpetual state of flux.
The poems are sonically aware of this a shifting self, a self constantly interrogated and displaced due to its otherness. Dense, maximalist, kinetic, Spanglish, these poems are nexuses of interpolations (vs. self), a hoard of different (and often, conflicting) registers — hi/lo, assimilative/immigrant, orthodox/queer, white/brown — that resist closure and comfortable conclusions.
Shoutout to Restored Mural for Orlando, Self-Portrait According to George W. Bush), In Service of Silence, When a Person Says Go Back to Your Country and a few of the Queerodactyl poems for smashing my heart. From the last Queerodactyl:
I, too, have buried myself under the heavy presence
of change, from a longing, perhaps, to find my remnants,
or their profiles, in places where curious strangers
might prize them. [...] I, too, have questioned
the usefulness of finding a body stuck in a perpetual
position of near flight—arms extended like the incandescence
from a lamppost at night—& wished it be mine.
August 4, 2024
I read this book as part of my quest to read a book written by an author from each of the 196 countries in the world. The author of these poems is from Honduras.
I admit that I do not enjoy reading poetry - I never understand it and I'm not even sure how to read it. I find myself having to study each word and each sentence, which seems like too much work.
Although I say this, I realize that this is a collection of very powerful, heartfelt, and brutally honest poems. Guzman is a queer man, an immigrant from Honduras. He writes about the pain of rejection and racism in America. He writes about the border crossings and the violence against gay and transgender souls. It is brutal and honest and sometimes difficult to read.
A suggestion: At the end of the book, there are notes about many of the poems, explaining the background of the material. These help to better understand the topics.
I admit that I do not enjoy reading poetry - I never understand it and I'm not even sure how to read it. I find myself having to study each word and each sentence, which seems like too much work.
Although I say this, I realize that this is a collection of very powerful, heartfelt, and brutally honest poems. Guzman is a queer man, an immigrant from Honduras. He writes about the pain of rejection and racism in America. He writes about the border crossings and the violence against gay and transgender souls. It is brutal and honest and sometimes difficult to read.
A suggestion: At the end of the book, there are notes about many of the poems, explaining the background of the material. These help to better understand the topics.
September 23, 2022
really wanted to like this, but I struggled with it. maybe it just isnt a style that resonates with me. i have absorbed and adored so much poetry from queer immigrant writers, and its existence in the world and in this country is vital, vital as breath, as prophecy. this author will have a long career ahead of them and lots of time to grow and develop. their love of language and the way they wield it with such confidence is really cool. it just felt dense and overwrought and not grounded to me. at moments, it really shone, and the imagery of family and immigration and pain and death and mourning-- all very strong and unique in the way they are painted through verse. but largely i felt the structure and language were an albatross around the neck. many echoes of Ocean Vuong and Eduardo Corral.
July 9, 2020
I appreciated the structure of the book, with its different styles of poetry. The poems were very descriptive and had you write there with the characters. This book was kind of a hard read and definitely had to reread a few times to understand. I appreciated the stories of injustices and marginalization that people of color have to endure. It spoke about the shooting at the gay night club in Orlando, the struggles of immigration and so much more. It was a challenge but certainly enriched my vocabulary and expanded my interest in poetry. I would recommend this book for people who enjoy poetry.
December 8, 2020
This is a beautifully-produced edition from Gray Wolf, with pages large enough to accommodate Guzmán's often-long poetic lines. The book (barely) breaks 90 pages but, unlike many longer debut collections, it doesn't feel like he had to throw the kitchen sink in in order to meet some page requirement. The book is focused on themes such as sexuality, family, politics, immigration, and then brings up a whole load of "sub-sections" within those larger categories. Some of the wordplay poems didn't resound as strongly with me (some of the "Queerodactyl" poems in particular), but those were few in number.
The "Queerodactyl" series was probably the biggest highlight, but there are also some amazing prose pieces.
At its best moments, this is a really powerful book--Guzmán ascends to great heights, but it is often describing tragedy.
The "Queerodactyl" series was probably the biggest highlight, but there are also some amazing prose pieces.
At its best moments, this is a really powerful book--Guzmán ascends to great heights, but it is often describing tragedy.
December 17, 2025
This had some really beautiful moments
Specific shoutouts to [Arthur's Spelling Trouble]
"The majority of us recruits weak the first to land in Iraq & Afghanistan, primarily poor, sons of refugees, to die abroad as if dying on US soil wasn't already effortless. They are not looking for brown minds but brown war machines, my stepfather says."
"A palindrome is a word that has two chances to disappoint you."
and [Self-Portrait According to George W. Bush]
"America, when will you stop transiting over the ashes
of our tongues? English is just another word
for deathbed."
3.5
Specific shoutouts to [Arthur's Spelling Trouble]
"The majority of us recruits weak the first to land in Iraq & Afghanistan, primarily poor, sons of refugees, to die abroad as if dying on US soil wasn't already effortless. They are not looking for brown minds but brown war machines, my stepfather says."
"A palindrome is a word that has two chances to disappoint you."
and [Self-Portrait According to George W. Bush]
"America, when will you stop transiting over the ashes
of our tongues? English is just another word
for deathbed."
3.5
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August 11, 2020Mostly marking this as read for now - there was much of interest to me and I liked how the collection was put together. But there were many references I couldn't track (mostly to gay nightlife), of both language and form, so I need to spend more time with it, maybe return in another year.
That I want to enter more into these poems is clear to me, so I will return.
That I want to enter more into these poems is clear to me, so I will return.
March 23, 2021
I feel like there is something good here, but I personally couldn't quite key into it most of the time. There were a handful of poems I found quite powerful. I'm interested in seeing out videos of them reading their poems, as I think these may work better for me in that format.
February 24, 2025
Maybe I was just not in the right headspace while reading this or maybe I should just steer clear from poetry but a lot of poems fell flat and felt confusing and not in a good way that makes me think deeper.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews