for Roberto Sosa
I read garbage
unlike the poetry
recommended
to me by major
magazines
the trash
in which you
dispose
of Yesterday
before it starts
to reek
& your neighbors
think you’ve killed
your husband
your adopted child
or possibly
even yourself.
Because they’ve seen
how you hustle
the corner like a
Biblical beast
hungering for what
she already has.
I read cereal boxes
shrunken
nutritional facts
the main headlines
a child swindled
at birth.
Cake candles
punctured balloons
the tail of an iguana
deifying the lid.
Revenge is one
of the first stories
my grandmother
read to me
when she warned my mother
I was a magnet for
impurities.
Any whisper
I noticed
I heard it tenfold
& reported it
to my mother
at a time
when she worked
as a secretary
for the Germans
in Honduras.
She’d wear tailored
suits
& I was proud
to be the only one
who ate chicken
for lunch.
The garbage I
now eat in the States
has the bleach taste
my mother would pour
in the toilet bowls
of wealthy family homes
to save us from
living
in a whorehouse.
I see you hustling
not in the style
of Catherine Deneuve
in Belle de Jour
but like rain water
that curdles into swamps.
In the morning
when my neighbor’s
baby bawls
the garbage truck pulls
into the parking lot
a man gets off
the truck
if the operation
begs for assistance.
As a child
I watched other children
my age move to the pile
of waste
excavating livelihood
from broken bottles
classifying the dead
from the sellable
scavenger homes
marbles on cardboard.
A few lempiras
would have altered
how the ecosystem
functions
from the standpoint
of a child.
Even when there isn’t
garbage in sight
it’s inside my nostrils
your smell
inside my pies
a country
whose memories I see
in pizza leftovers
bubblegum wrappers
shoes worn
beyond their expiration
date
your feet on my face
the new things I’m into
the rotten
eggs & milk between
us.
I see garbage
when the fan
in the bathroom burbles
to reveal my teeth
& I see me—uno de ellos.
Originally appeared in Drunken Boat
Roy G. Guzmán was born in Honduras and raised in Miami, Florida. They are currently pursuing a PhD in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, where they also received an MFA in creative writing. Roy is a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow. Their debut collection will be published by Graywolf Press in 2020. Website: roygguzman.com. Twitter: @dreamingauze.