Vigil
i
As we cradle our daughter between us
you dream of your mother
falling into illness.
If only you could catch her
before she hits bottom.
If only you could shelter her,
wrap her in a cloak of healing.
ii
Our baby curls her body in sleep
as in the womb. Your mother uncurls her hair,
lets it fall over her swollen body.
Parched, she lives each day
on a few sips of water.
Thirst never quenched.
Legs too weak for walking.
iii
When she succumbs, you fly to Mexico
and keep vigil with her body,
light candles through the night,
reminisce with siblings and tías,
eat and pray for her smooth passage.
I cuddle the baby, soothe her cries,
let her suckle my breast.
iv
You will return motherless,
listen to the baladas she loved,
reckon with your memories.
Our daughter will grow curls
and light our days with laughter.
You and I will grow apart, still
tethered by our love for this child.
_____________________________________________________________________
Zahara
Woman who inspired gardens
to bloom and metals to glisten.
Last time I saw her
we sat side by side,
leaning against pillows.
I rubbed her temples
and she softened into the bed,
pain subsiding.
This friend—so close,
my hand upon her scalp.
Thin film between this side
and the other.
How present becomes past.
Yvette Neisser is an award-winning poet, Spanish translator, and founder of the DC-Area Literary Translators Network (DC-ALT). Her most recent collection is Iron into Flower (Finishing Line, 2022). Her co-translation of Venezuelan poet Maria Teresa Ogliastri’s From the Diary of Madame Mao won the 2025 Carnegie Mellon University Press Translation Prize and will be published in 2026. Her poems, translations, and essays have appeared in Foreign Policy in Focus, Tikkun, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Split This Rock’s The Quarry, among others. She lives in Silver Spring, MD. / www.yvetteneisser.net