guaya / quil

Madeleine Cepeda-Hanley


According to legend, the city of Guayaquil, Ecuador was named after Guayas and Quil, a Huancavilca chief and his wife who defended their land against Spanish conquistadors until they were captured. in most versions of the story, Guayas kills his wife and then himself, rather than allowing the invaders to kill them both in front of their village. 


I. Quil 

give the child your name 

is what my mother told you in so many words 

a mother is a small planet eggshell body of opal 

with cheeks painted in streaks of sunburn with 

the land dancing the same orbit as her hips 

galaxies of sacrifice spooned into her belly 

there are a million and one pints of river 

watching my flight my fall and every eye like 

a new dress washing its insides away to 

lighten itself for migration or simple hospitality 

on another day I would call it phenomenon 

today I would crack myself open a strange fruit 

and run down the hills collecting an army 

of little gods men into myself and call 

it survival if I could learn to believe it 

another small lesson is learning how to sheath 

a sword in a womb the child I hope

will be made of softer things than steel 


II. Guayas 

if this moment is a prayer I cannot measure its 

weight in obsidian or stone or gold, the heaviest 

of all sunlight drowned in something bitter 

melted and recast around the neck if you are 

high enough above the horizon martyr and murder 

are the same word twins of one tortured dance

obsessing themselves over the skins they will add to 

their growing bodies like sheets of rainy season 

or an infinite snakeskin that strangles itself in its effort 

to recall to rejoice in what lies at the end of 

each point of a spondylus shell like finger pricks 

like the angles of my face like the beat of a bird’s 

heart like the sound of an arrow aimed like 

a baby’s first tooth like the blank stare of a gun 

my love: our bones will forget themselves in the 

process but if there is anything left here 

give the child your name 


 
 
 

about the writer

1.jpg

Madeleine Cepeda-Hanley is an Ecuadorian-American poetry enthusiast from New Jersey and is currently a freshman at Yale University. Her work is published in Vita Brevis Magazine. She divides her love between New York pizza, Latinx political dialogue, language learning, and experimental writing.