El jardín andino

Julia Wong Kcomt

Fuerte puñado de estiércol
Piedra sobre guijarro
Hoja sobre hoja

Río comarca cadáver
Capullo

Savia rima otorongo
Caracolitos.

The Andean Garden

translated from the Spanish by
Jennifer Shyue

Fistful of dung, pungent
Stone over pebble
Leaf over leaf

River district corpse
Cocoon

Sap rhymes jaguar
Miniature snails.

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.