WHEN THE MACHETE WILL SEVER THE BALLAD

“There was one in particular the soldiers talked about that evening…a girl on La Cruz whom they had raped many times during the course of the afternoon, and through it all…this girl had sung hymns, strange evangelical songs, and she had kept right on singing, too, even after they had done what had to be done, and shot her in the chest. She had lain there on La Cruz with the blood flowing from her chest, and had kept on singing — a bit weaker than before, but still singing. And the soldiers, stupefied, had watched and pointed. Then they had grown tired of the game and shot her again, and she sang still, and their wonder began to turn to fear — until finally they had unsheathed their machetes and hacked through her neck, and at last the singing had stopped.”

-Mark Danner, The Truth of El Mozote
(Memory-Mourning for El Mozote)

the others wrestle shrill with
their own endings,

barely she moves
but sings her prayer,

it is December and
there will be light
somewhere shining
from the God of ravens
and Jesus, magüey and
youth, there will be
light shining
out of the mouths
of moon silversides
defying their slippery gravity
to leap their testimony at the moon,

barely she moves
her back to the damp
soil of the hill
while
turn by turn
these soldiers
invade

scorched earth tarring their hearts,

inviting the vultures to breakfast:
Atlacatl is disgraced.

Barely she moves,
but sings amidst the detritus
of broken glass bottles and
a battalion rendered weary

guaro stinging her cuts
through the force of despoilment
rhythming her small body
a hard thunder in her ears,

she sings,

she sings melodies to the clouds above her,
beckoning the wrath of angels
and genealogies of pain, traces
of wraiths and torment upon the slumber
of questioning guns,
she sings,

she sings.

Barely she moves,
but she sings.

She sings in tongues
the names of grandmothers,
and haunts the suspicion of soldiers,
beneath the bullet, the chorus trembling

they call her demon,
again, again,
beneath lead
they aim to assuage fear rising
in their veins, of demons and loss,
nugatory pull in the gut,
memories of their own sisters,
an aching for home, hung
out of reach,
like the children
in the field below,
swaying beneath the blood
of branches sapping
the taste of disbelief.

Barely she moves,
but still she sings,

the incantation
that will confess the day
to the wind,
sympathy
of the stars,

still she sings,

until the last moment
when the machete
will sever the ballad,

until the last moment,

she sings,

she sings

until the last moment.

The charred skulls of children will sleep piled in the earth
in the corner of the sacristy,
housing beetles and the roots of dandelions:

A quiet wrenches itself from hiding.

Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes is a queer, mixed-race, second-generation Colombian immigrant, writer, scholar, artist, and activist. Her poetry has been seen or is forthcoming in a number of literary journals and anthologies, including Kudzu House Review, As/Us, Feminist Studies Journal, Nepantla, Yellow Medicine Review, Write Bloody’s ‘We Will Be Shelter’, and others. Her chapbook, ‘The Inheritance of Haunting’ is due out by Raspa Press in fall 2016. She currently lives in Brooklyn.