Forage

1 Minute Read Time

                   I turn clay soil, mound rocks, 
                   squeeze grubs with my fingers.
                  My spade, the soil, a rasp.
                  A dry northeast heat wave.

When I was five, Mamá chopped 
my hair. Wild girl, always
in a tangle. Holes in your jeans, 
grass stains on your sweaters.

                   Through my hair, wind, dust, twigs.

Impatient bumblebees,
you know we’ll have flowers.

                  I pull quack grass,
                  plant deep-rooted cowpeas, mustard, 
                  crimson clover.

Watch for the stealth
of a screech owl in flight.
Wild girl.

                  Write a letter
                  to my dead mamá.

How does one awaken 
this conflicted land?

                  Last night—a black bear 
                  in the neighbor’s pool.
                  Last night, I almost held berries 
                  for it in my hands.

Luisa Caycedo-Kimura

Luisa Caycedo-Kimura is the author of All Were Limones (The Word Works, 2025), winner of the Hillary Tham Capital Collection competition. Other honors include a Connecticut Office of the Arts Emerging Recognition Award, 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 (You may read about her adventures as a Global Fellow in her Alive in Spain travel blog). A three time Pushcart Prize nominee and Best of the Net nominee, her poems appear or are forthcoming in Four Way Review, Denver Quarterly, The Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, Rattle, Diode, RHINO, Mid-American Review, Louisiana Literature, Driftwood Press Anthology, and elsewhere. Caycedo-Kimura is Colombian-born writer, translator, educator, and former attorney. She holds an MFA from Boston University.

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