Julia Wong Kcomt

THE RICE FIELD

translated from Spanish by Jennifer Shyue

Papá, the rice field is no longer green
the girl cousins run and want
to lift themselves like slim herons, but they can’t
their bellies filled with yams and shame
with envy with sand with ruins

The highway’s the same, or so one imagines
the castles wrecked by the wind
the trash the buzzards
hunks of rusted bicycle
compassion does not gleam
the people seem to hate me

It’s the rhythm of the rice
of the entire valley purring
love is lukewarm like a dirty bed
lasts exactly three hours
and then silence of the irrigation board
ice cream men with cartons of syrupy styrofoam

As a girl I believed myself happy.
The rice likes children, to scare them
when they grow up and become sad
it grows distant. It dries.

JULIA WONG KCOMT was born into a tusán (Chinese Peruvian) family in Chepén, Peru, in 1965. She is the author of sixteen volumes of poetry, including Ladrón de codornices and 18 poemas de fake love para Keanu Reeves; five books of fiction; and two collections of hybrid prose. She lives between Lima and Lisbon.

JENNIFER SHYUE is a translator focusing on contemporary Cuban and Asian-Peruvian writers. Her work has been supported by grants from Cornell University’s Institute for Comparative Modernities, the Fulbright Program, Princeton University, and the University of Iowa, and has appeared in The Arkansas International, The Common, and A Perfect Vacuum. Her translation of Julia Wong Kcomt’s Bi-rey-nato is forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse’s Señal chapbook series.