Catrachos

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.