To Nica, With Love

By Laura Sweeney

In the midst of the monsoon
and the thousand year flood
my Nica nostalgia rises.

I remember Corn Island
sailing from the Moskito Coast
hammocking in the breeze

orange pop in a plastic bag
black beans and blue
burns on my shins.

Maybe that is why I like it here
the rocking chairs on the porches
the houses on stilts.

In New Orleans you offered me
a stick of Big Red gum,
“Don’t lose the sweetness

of your character,” you said.
Then predicted I would never leave
Bluefields and Sandinistas,

picos, plantains, potato fried fish
my peach-apple-pear life turned
tamarind-jackfruit-piña, sweet

lime juice with a shot of ron,
a splash of limon. And
in this Caribbean culture

with the crawdads and crab shells
I’m still writing to Nica, to my
Nicaragua, with love, and thirst.

Laura Sweeney facilitates Writers for Life in central Iowa. She represented the Iowa Arts Council at the First International Teaching Artist’s Conference in Oslo, Norway. Her recent and forthcoming poems appear in Folia, Wordrunner eChapbook, Yellow Chair Review, One Sentence Poems, Red Savina Review, Main Street Rag, Midwest Review, Canadian Woman Studies, Aji, and the anthologies, Nuclear Impact, and Beer, Wine, & Spirits. She is associate editor for Eastern Iowa Review.