print previewback JACQUELINE BALDERRAMA
Zero, 2018
Keep saying what you saw and before you are sore
I will sing, and before I am parched, another.
Sing cero, cero, cero.
The round of our voices might roll back
our thoughts, might recollect the scattered photos,
the children’s cries, that hot summer within
the border’s belly—
cages
no clocks
barely shadows
to tell the time
and the backs of people on long, narrow benches,
the way it grew crowded
and transformed from cement floors
and crinkled, silver blankets
into many, distant rooms.
Cero for the mourning O of outrage,
for the empty shell drawn first to signify an accounted nothingness,
for the meaningless words and hurried signatures
on bright white pages. 
Canción de Cuna
Zero, 2018