Catrachos

Catrachos is the debut poetry collection by Roy G. Guzmán. The title is a word for the people of Honduras, and it carries both solidarity and endurance. Across these poems, Guzmán moves between life and death as well as between nations, giving voice to those who have been lost.

The book braids together several strands: an immigration story, an elegy, and a queer coming-of-age narrative. Guzmán turns to pop singers, the X-Men, and a creature he calls the "Queerodactyl" as objects of a kind of devotion. In one sequence of poems, that dinosaur struts through the shadow of an approaching comet, refusing to be wiped out by extinction.

Energetic, playful, and inventive, the collection pairs humor with serious emotional and ethical weight. It marks the arrival of a new voice in contemporary poetry.