In Los Angeles I grew up watching The Three Stooges,
The Little Rascals, Speed Racer, and the Godzilla movies,
those my mother called “Los monstruos,” and though I didn’t
yet speak English, I understood why such a creature would,
upon being woken up from its centuries-long slumber, rise
and destroy Tokyo’s buildings, cars, people—I understood
by the age of twelve what it meant to be unwanted, exiled,
how you move from one country to another where nobody
wants you, nobody knows you, and I sat in front of the TV,
transfixed by the snow-fizz on our old black and white,
and when Godzilla bellows his eardrum-crushing growl,
I screamed back, this victory-holler from one so rejected
and cursed to another.
—Virgil Suárez
Isla
