Fourteen

by Adriana Vazquez

They say he killed 14 men

to escape from a Mexican prison.

I wrote about him

in a 6th grade paper

assigned on family members

who fought in war.

And all the little blonde girls

with their ribbon tied braids

wrote about their grandfathers

nobly annihilating those Nazis.

And when I asked my parents

for some equivalent family tale,

I pouted

with no d-day stories

or progress of pilgrims

to show and tell.

Instead my father translated

a war word by word

whose history almost entirely written

En Español.

He deciphered the story of a man

with his own myth

far greater than El Zorro.

Telephone line to telephone line

they hung those padres

robes and all.

And two men were murdered

when little Carmen and Rosa

peeped inside church doors,

as they convicted

their catholic convictions

Fourteen

vowed to set his country free

as he took up fourteen arms

and led those cristeros forward.

Fourteen

is what they called him

fought for a freedom

that would impassion

the religious fervor of those

blue eyed, red state parents.

But I was only eleven,

too embarrassed

to share with the class

of upper middle-class heirs

because freedom was only freedom

with stars and stripes.

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About the Author:

Adriana Vazquez is a writer from California now living on the East Coast. Her works on immigration and women’s issues have been published in a variety of outlets including the SF Examiner, Washington Examiner, and more. Vazquez has been writing poetry since she was 8 years old and her first poem was published in an issue of Highlights Magazine. @vazquezadri