Three Poems

Judith Santopietro

El Delivery


—Carlito Azevedo

An immigrant runs along the roof of the train
the train crosses the Metlac bridge    at onethousandonehundredone masl
an immigrant teeters 
as if the peak of the world were moving forward 
in sync with the mountains
all quiet on the northamerican passage
Perhaps later on there will be  
     checkpoints     screeching rails
but for now he is recording the clouded forest on his cell
and the black orchids   rushing by in a sequence of images

A sound reaches him from one of the cars
the garífunas tethered to the metal bars
dancing with babies on their breasts
later they will inhabit the deserts of Arizona
or the humid pastures of Bronx summers

Though now   an immigrant is defying gravity
rapturous to reach the North
later   his body will toughen to endure the storms
                     distributing food and christmas gifts
while others take refuge in their central heating
he will be known as a delivery 
a word emblazoned in red letters
at the entrance to every restaurant
he will be known as a delivery as he balances on his bicycle
                                and the train presses on

an immigrant defies gravity
leaps over the desert and then the sea 
from high atop the bridge   babbling a distant land
that even he cannot remember.

translated from the Spanish by Mary Ann Newman




hearts that beat underground

we make our way among the massive forest plants:
to-and-fro movements of ants bearing leaves      trunks
until the scrub that conceals them is uprooted;
here we read every trace of nature to learn
whether any gesture still dear to us remains

body by body,
hearts cleansed
we advance over fields

eyes peeled to discern earth     faintly churned

body by body,
we explore furrows in search of their bones:
                       movements of ants        waves
that convey aromas         and smiles        the taste of their last kiss
we want to know whether they sleep wrapped in moss,
whether they feel cold or hunger, as when life begins

body by body,
we dig in silence
in order to hear the rhythm of hearts that beat underground.

translated from the Spanish by Tanya Huntington




sweet bougainvillea never to be reborn

broken bones slumber on the highway

the beheaded
the sorrowful

those who can no longer weep
scatter their dust over damp soil 

holes bored into the facades of houses 
                                 their walls bleed
the smell of lead enshrouds the parks
and in the gardens      one by one
clusters of their skin are sown 
sweet bougainvillea never to be reborn

the flow of water is spectral red       heraldic red

as crimson as the rust of their blood
claret      the dread of a wizened cherry 

their bones also quake 
                                 in a death rattle of substratum

mineral vapors caress  
like so      the salty pain of the spine
the thorn in our dreams: 

as the scarlet city burns. 
 
translated from the Spanish by Tanya Huntington

translated from the Spanish by Mary Ann Newman and Tanya Huntington

Read the original in Spanish

The first challenge of Judith Santopietro’s poem is the title. Rendering “Delivery” in Spanish as “El Delivery” in English was a way to reflect how the Spanish language vibrates in the bones and tongue of New York, and how it transforms English. Not a “delivery boy,” but a personage defined in neon: “El Delivery.” 

The second challenge is the velocity, the rhythm, the impetus. The poem begins with a train—it begins with a person on the roof of the train—but first let’s discuss how Judith transmits the intermittency through the distribution of words and spaces on the page, some words strung together seamlessly, others stranded among white spaces. The movement begins on a train in Mexico and ends with a bicycle and a different train, and a different bridge, in an unbroken journey.  

The beauty of Judith’s poem lies in its characters: migrants, immigrants, asylum-seekers, so often portrayed as downtrodden, as victims. But against all stereotypes her “delivery,” moved by the landscape from the roof of the train, even as later he is hardened by experience, defies gravity.      

—Mary Ann Newman

I had the opportunity of translating these two poems by Judith during her participation in a marvelous symposium, The Shared Language of Poetry, which took place in Washington, D.C. and Maryland the November of 2021. They share a tragic theme which has torn through the fabric of Mexican society in recent years: that of forced disappearances and the ongoing search organized by the mothers of the missing for their remains. To me, both poems are examples of how poetry can call out for justice on behalf of the victims of violence and represent the collective labor of women without adopting an ideological stance or pamphleteering tone. My goal in these versions was to reproduce the deeply moving rhythm and imagery of the originals.

—Tanya Huntington

Judith Santopietro is the author of the books Palabras de Agua (Words of Water; Instituto Veracruzano de Cultura-Praxis, 2010) and Tiawanaku: Poemas de la Madre Coqa/ Poems from the Mother Coqa, translated into English by Illana Luca (Orca Libros, 2019). She was a finalist for the Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation in 2021. Her literary contributions have extended to numerous festivals, including PEN America’s World Voices Festival in New York in 2018, and the project Narratives and Memories on Disappearance in Mexico where she facilitated literary workshops aimed at families in search of their disappeared family members. From 2005 to 2016, she directed Iguanazul: literature on indigenous languages, a project focusing on oral tradition, literature, and arts. In 2022, she was awarded the International Writing Program Residency at The University of Iowa. Currently, she is writing a poetry book on enforced disappearances in Mexico and her debut novel on indigenous migration in New York City.

Mary Ann Newman translates from Catalan and Spanish. She has published fiction by Quim Monzó, essays by Xavier Rubert de Ventós, and poetry by Josep Carner. Her most recent translations are Private Life (Archipelago Books, 2015), a 1932 Catalan classic by Josep Maria de Sagarra, for which she won the 2017 Premi J.B. Cendrós from Òmnium Cultural and the 2017 North American Catalan Society Prize, and Final Judgements, by Joan Fuster (Fum d’Estampa, 2023). She was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi in 1998. She is currently Executive Director of the Farragut Fund for Catalan Culture in the U.S., a member of the board of the Catalan Institute of America, and President of the Jury of the Premi Internacional Catalunya. In 2025 she was admitted as a corresponding member to the Institut d’Estudis Catalans.  

Tanya Huntington is a binational writer, artist, and Managing Editor of the digital magazine Literal: Latin American Voices, and was born in the U.S. in 1969. Tanya holds a Ph.D. in Latin American literature from the University of Maryland at College Park and has translated works by dozens of Mexican writers into English over the past thirty years. She has also coproduced and contributed to various public radio and television programs dedicated to culture and the arts in Mexico, for which she has received first prize at the Bienal Internacional de Radio on two separate occasions. Her artwork has been exhibited both in the United States and Mexico and selected by prestigious venues such as the Bienal de Pintura Rufino Tamayo and the Bienal FEMSA. She is currently a member of the National System of Creative Artists of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA).