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
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.