Metacognition is a Motherfucker

A gringo who’s read,
presented, and written on post-
colonialism, riding first class
across Guatemala looking out
at campesinos waiting for chicken
buses, then he’s haggling for hand-carved
turtles, being taken, and a little drunk,
knows that just because he knows
what the people and their scholars
know, it doesn’t make him less gringo.



Position 443

Where I was when I learned
this, the campesinos would start
with six or seven cuba libres,
before teaching me how to smell
a fruit in the open air market
past the drying sea bass and unshaved
armpits of backpackers. The elder
showed how the woman lay on her left
side, facing a plum tree, and I bared
myself out of an 11th floor window and waited
for the butterflies and bees to eat
petals smeared on skin this morning.