By LUISA VILLA MERIÑO 
Translated from the Colombian Spanish by CIGAN VALENTINE

Poem appears below in English and the original Spanish

Translator’s note:
I originally stumbled upon Luisa Villa Meriño’s works in a class at Amherst College on the history of the Colombian Civil War. I was immediately captivated by a selection of poems we read from her collection Dios fue mejor cuando era tigre (God Was Better When He Was A Tiger) and later by a brief talk Villa Meriño gave over Zoom. What initially drew me to her words was how immersive the reading experience was; these were poems that held me in space unlike any other. Since then, I’ve returned again and again to Villa Meriño’s poetry, which has yet to be published in the US and is seldom translated. Her recent collection, Hijas de las perras negras (Daughters of the Black Bitches), won the Gabriel Celaya International Poetry Prize 2023 in Spain.