Secret Cemetery 


       for all the Native Guatemalans massacred in the genocide, funded by America, to eradicate Communism


 Festive candles fence
            an unearthed grave as if
exhuming corpses is some sort
            of birthday celebration.
                        A Guatemalan anthropologist
                                    chisels
                                                petrified deposits
                                                collected
                                    on a collarbone.
            A charred skull smiles— 
            a toothy grin—as though
                        it’s either madly laughing
                                    or lamenting
                        at a prank
            the flesh has played on it. 

                        Where the soil breaks
                        in a line of coffee bushes,
                                    two crows flap for lime trees— 
                        the limes look like green streetlights.
                                  Reagan gave the green light here— 
                        casualties carefully estimated.

But what was that to the indigenous child
burned alive in the village center?
To the pregnant woman hacked in bed?



 
Editor's note: Domenic translated the next two poems, Diatribe against the Dead and Savoir Faire, from the original Spanish.

Diatribe against the Dead
by Angel Gonzales

The dead are selfish: they make us cry and do not care,
Stay quiet in the most inconvenient places,
Refuse to walk—we have to carry them
Piggyback to the grave
As if they were children—what a burden.
Unusually rigid, their faces  
Accuse us of something, or warn us;
They are the bad conscience, the bad example,
The worst things in our lives always, always. 
The bad thing about the dead
Is that there is no way to kill them.
Their constant destructive labor
Is for that reason, incalculable. 
Insensitive, distant, stubborn, cold,
With their insolence and silence
They do not realize what they undo. 




Savoir Faire 
by Claribel Alegria

My black cat ignores the fact
that someday he will die
he does not cling to life like me
he lunges from the rooftop
light as air
he climbs the tamarind
barely scratching it
he does not cringe at crossing bridges
or darkened alleyways
nor the treacherous scorpion
my black cat falls in love
with every cat he meets
he refuses to be captured 
by a single love
the way I was. 




Kittens

 
They curl close.         

            Everything going on
                        in the apartment
is mysterious to them— 
            mother and father arguing— 
            a creaking floorboard that exposes
                        younger brother sneaking
                                    to our bedroom

            Now and then
                        they nudge each other
                                    with their heads
                                    or paws— 
                        little gestures between them— 
                                  
                                    sleep
                                  
                                    it’s safe here
                                 
                                    we’re together.