The speaker, a woman fighter (the title, "Guerillera," points that way), describes an ambush at daybreak. Men sleep beside their dogs and rifles in thorn scrub, and she and her comrades kill them. Even in that moment her mind drifts to the same scrub in bloom, with its bright reds and purples and its clouds of bees, which she remembers from childhood.
She shuts her eyes briefly but insists it isn't fear. She says it's men who tremble when their guns go off. Then she turns to her past, recalling how she helped her uncle at slaughtering time and admired how cleanly his knife passed through the joints. His song, with its advice to keep your heart still and your shoulder to the sky, seems to have become her creed.
The mood is cold and calm, with tenderness running underneath. The poem draws a quiet line between butchery and killing, and the speaker's steadiness feels both learned and chosen.