I am 11 years old, now and forever.
I was born in Barrio FendeSal in Soyapango,
not far from San Salvador, but for me
nobody ever was my savior.
My father got killed by pandilleros
from MS-13–
they stole a soda and a quarter off him, that was all he had,
he made three dollars a day at the garbage dump.
I helped him out pulling the cart,
and sometimes we found food
in the trash bags that came from Metrocentro
and went home happy.
I ran away from Soyapango with Pablo, who’s 15,
my friend from the street.
He wanted to be a futbolista like me and play
for the Selecta, we’d go to the major leagues
and try our luck—that’s why we were aiming
to get to the United States,
where they have more dollars than gangs.
At a Mexican sandwich stand
in Coatepeque, Guatemala, I saw an awesome
show on TV about El Mágico González:
playing for the best Cádiz club in history
he scored two goals off Barcelona
the year my father was born, 1984;
I was so happy I cried.
Two days to reach the Mexican border;
we crossed the river and hopped onto the Beast,
just past Tecún Uman, in Ciudad Hidalgo.
Before we reached Arriaga I fell asleep,
and I’m still falling.
Forever, just like El Mágico, I’ll wear
an 11 tattooed on my back,
maybe for how many bags they put
my torn-up body in,
maybe because I was wearing the Selecta shirt
with that very number, or maybe because death’s got
that endless 11 of train tracks carved on its gut.
Before I fell, Pablo told me this dream:
I saw Roque Dalton rising up among the living
to come back to the land of the dead;
at his right hand side, El Mágico was dribbling up on Death,
kicking the heads of Salvadoran pandilleros
and doing that snake move, the culebrita macheteada,
knocking a tremendous nutmeg between Death’s legs.
Flor Blanca Stadium was packed—the crowd was holding
a gigantic wake for all the migrants who were dead.
I know that God plays futbol up in heaven,
but I don’t want to be on his team just yet.
I’ll stay right here on the bench, waiting
for my friend Pablo and El Mágico González
to call me with a smile
to play a match.
Sermon of the Migrant (Beneath a Ceiba Tree)
I hereby declare: my love for Central America dies with me.
Francisco Morazán
And God too was in exile, migrating without end;
he traveled, riding the Beast, and had not been crucified
but was maimed in the arms and legs, mute, and ashen all over
as he fell in the shape of a cross from the highest heavens,
thrown down by delinquent punks from the black clouds of the train,
from the endless labyrinth of gondolas and boxcars,
and I saw plainly how his ribs had been pierced
by the curved spears of smugglers, the gun butts of cops,
the bayonets of soldiers, the narcos’ extorting
tongues, and his suffering was as great
as that of all the migrants put together, which is to say,
it was like anybody’s pain; before, when he was in Central America,
that little Bethlehem sunken down in a broken corner of the world,
he said to us in his Sunday sermon as he baptized
the banished and exiled, the landless
and poor, in the waters of the dying Río Lempa:
“Let those who would come with me to Estados Unidos
leave their families behind and abandon the gangs, the violence,
the poverty and hunger, and forsake the despicable
bosses and oligarchs of Central America, and follow me;”
and yet as he fell, even before the mutilations,
before they carried him to the coroner’s office torn to pieces,
to be buried in a common grave like any other
Central American, like the hundreds of migrants
who are murdered every year in Mexico,
as he fell with his arms and legs in the shape of a cross,
before hitting the ground, the tracks, before his flesh was torn
by the steel chariots and iron horses of the Beast,
before his sacred blood stained the various crowns of thorns
that roll along rails that were riveted in with bones
on the Aztec kingdom’s back, the Lord recalled in visions
his disciple Francisco Morazán and kissed his cheek,
and took up a handful of Central American dirt to anoint
his tongue and heart, and recalled that Morazán had asked him once,
as they lay in the shade of a ceiba tree,
the very one where he’d worked the miracle of multiplying the moonshine
and tortillas, “Master, what should we do if they arrest us
and deport us?” to which he responded, “You must migrate seventy
times seven, and if they ask you for dollars and deport you again,
give them all you have, your garment, your backpack, your water bottle,
your shoes,
and shake the dust from your feet, and migrate once more
from Central America and from Mexico without turning, ever again,
to look back . . . ”
Migrant’s Prayer
The Spanish verb levantar (to raise or pick up, or in other contexts, to awaken) has become a euphemism in news parlance, borrowed from criminal and police slang, for the arbitrary or illegal capture or abduction of persons, often followed by torture, killing or disappearance.
COMMANDO UNIT ROUNDS UP EIGHT MIGRANTS—VILLAHERMOSA, TABASCO: Local police confirm that eight Central American migrants, three male, five female, were rounded up in a commando raid while praying in a church at the Ranchería Buenavista in the town of Macuspana, 80 km south of this city.
I don’t want to get up, father.
I don’t want you to wake me up, mother.
I’d rather fall, I’d rather fall,
into the loving, knife-sharp arms of the Beast.
No one wants to be grabbed up, father.
No one wants to be rounded up, mother.
I used to get myself up for school, father.
I used to get myself up to go play, mother.
The caress of your hands would raise me up from sleep,
mother, your words would lift me up from the table,
father, I would lift my face up to the sun.
Once we were up we’d go to the cornfield, the woods,
the pasture for that season of the year.
But here in Tenosique, father,
others have lifted me, mother.
With humiliation and torture,
with rape and with slaughter.
They came for me earlier
and later than you ever did, mother,
and for forever, Father.
I don’t want them to pick me up.
I don’t want to stand up ever again.
Let no one rouse me forevermore.
The sheets that cover my face
are not white but stained with blood.
Now take up my body on a litter to Honduras.
Take up my body and my tears in a coffin.
Take up my black bones to be buried in Tegus.
I don’t want them to return and snatch me up, father.
I don’t want them to come back and carry me off, mother.
I don’t want to be spirited away. Tell them I’m not here.
Never wake me, father.
Never wake me up, mother.
Remains Identified of Eight Honduran Migrants Killed in Mexico
It was the time of decapitations,
forests of blank lines,
air darkened by flocks of silent birds.
Blood had lost its color
from the anemia of fear,
but rain was redder than shame
and mercilessly strafed the heart,
that powderless shell,
that panicked syllable of flesh.
The moon was dead,
a red speck trampled against the sky
by the boots of savages
who’d scattered
viscera of light among the tracks.
