Luisa Caycedo-Kimura

Luisa Caycedo-Kimura is a Colombian-born writer, translator, educator, and former attorney. Her honors include a John K. Walsh Residency Fellowship at the Anderson Center, an Adrienne Reiner Hochstadt Fellowship at Ragdale, and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems appear in The Cincinnati Review, Sunken Garden Poetry 1992-2011, RHINO, Diode, Shenandoah, Mid-American Review, Nashville Review, The Night Heron Barks, On the Seawall, and elsewhere. She is an editor of Connecticut River Review, a board member of the Connecticut Poetry Society, and a member of the Hill-Stead Museum’s Poetry Advisory Committee.

New Year’s Eve

(Anticipation)

It’s all done. 

            Her grave,  

a memory. 

            And her ass, 

my ass. 

            My sister, 

your daughter, 

            my niece, 

or was it me? 

(Preparation)

At home

            we laugh

            before 

            midnight

Champagne

            whispers

            flood our knees

            and you

            quiet as 

glass

            only motion

            when  

            nothing

            remains

            not even

sleep  

Even death

            from time 

            to time
takes a break.

(Gathering)

Childhood           flies

in poems 

                        under sleep 

And Maritza 

Her tears             Her eyes

                  Scratches

on her arms

                  and chest            

say 

                  it’s almost            midnight. 

Why aren’t            fingernails

sharp                   as memories? 

(Countdown)

Nights 

      are calm 

when 

           her blood 

drips 

          into  

the sink  

           The vinyl 

songs  

in the attic 

              never cease

(Toast)

A splintered frame 

a father 

A bullfrog’s 

head 

below water 

(Fireworks)

The skin 

of his jowls  

melts. Drips

of dusty candles  

on the 

Christmas  

plates. 

The smell  

of ochre 

and fog  

his breath 

Stilled  

like a child’s 

gasp

Goldfinches

I attempt a Jabberwocky 

exercise in class. 

My students say

we don’t understand. 

I say, Try. 

When they read Anzaldúa 

they complain 

All that Spanish.

How to help them grasp,

when we walk out on precipices  

there are flowers 

with names we don’t know. 

At home, I write among 

crackled acorns 

that cover my yard 

the driveway, overtake my land.

Two goldfinches hurry high

when they hear me  

not knowing the sunflowers

I planted are for them. 

A peach pit from mamá’s 

memorial tree 

will never yield fruit. 

It keeps nestled among herbs.

Weather Report

 rain           won’t           stop           in 

          this           house 

                                        not

           today 

not

           ‘til we 

float           down            the street

           pour our           empty-

ness           too

           treasured           to 

          rest 

                 not 

            ‘til des- 

pair           breaks           breath

           air

 a bat            in heat

           blankness           through 

floorboards          seeps

           a child 

unconceived           melts

            into           morning 

chills           then            breaks 

only            splintered 

ice remains           your

           lips 

my           legs