Volume 69, Number 1 · Fall 2019
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Cañón del Colca

Julia Wong Kcomt

El cóndor se esconde
de ti, sagaz
no te mereces
ni las piedras reventando
al final del precipicio
palabras de lodo y plumas viejas
trasgreden
como acorde destemplado


Paraje lleno
de muerte y de miseria
vehemente
un corazón europeo está cerrado


Lince la luz
cuando babean de amor
los cráneos extranjeros.

Colca Canyon

translated from the Spanish by
Jennifer Shyue


The condor is hiding
from you, shrewd one
you don’t deserve
even the stones bursting
at the bottom of the chasm
mud words and old plumes
transgress
like tuneless chords


Landscape full
of death and destitution
fervent
a European heart is closed


Sharp-eyed light
when love makes drool drip
from foreign skulls.

Julia Wong Kcomt is a Chinese-Peruvian writer. Born in Chepén, Peru, she has lived on three continents. Her publications—a dozen volumes of poetry, three novels, one novella, one short-story collection, and two collections of hybrid prose work—include Ladrón de codornices, Doble felicidad, and Pessoa por Wong.
Jennifer Shyue is a translator from Spanish focusing on contemporary Cuban and Asian-Peruvian writers. She has an MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa and a BA in comparative literature from Princeton University, and is the recipient of a 2019 Fulbright grant to Peru. Her translations have appeared in American Chordata and Inventory. She can be found on the web at shyue.co.