• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

MAYDAY

  • Culture
  • Interviews
  • Reviews
  • Nonfiction
    • Contests
  • Translation
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • About
    • Submit
      • Contests
      • Contest Winners
      • MAYDAY:Black
    • Open Positions
    • Masthead
    • Contributors

MANGER by Ana Istarú (translated by Mark Smith-Soto)

January 1, 2010 Contributed By: Ana Istarú, Mark Smith-Soto

The scent of thought, of meadow, of manger.
Let the universe pass with its cape of sparks.
Let it roll in the incline of purple winds.
Let it tear its forehead like a drunken crooner.

I listen to this crumb of bellowing crystal,
the glow spilling from such slender lips,
small cupful of flesh, little milky snout
to which my breasts run like dripping loaves.

Let the universe pass
with its fleet of wolves and helmet of glass,
its floury heart, its hole in reason.

I have to fall upon this thought,
let spring in it blackness the licorice
of these sweet nipples spilling down my blouse,
search among the hay and the oxen’s nearness
a delicate mouth, a glow that brays,

god-cub,
poured through my sex,
and I have to quench with my love and its white streams
that fistful of thirst.

My whole body is delight.
Blessed my aureoles under the kiss of a god.

Return to table of contents for Issue 2 Winter 2010

Filed Under: Poetry, Translation Posted On: January 1, 2010

Further Reading

Sourcing a Memory of My Brother While My Family and I Clear Brush Before the Rupture of the Oroville Dam
by Ronald Dzerigian

  We hit each other with severed branches, under green ponderosa, before the drought, thirty years ago. Gopher snakes wove   their grey and brown houndstooth skins around the wild mint that grew near waterways that would evaporate   as we got older, finally, and stopped playing with sticks. Now, the creeks have begun to […]

THE TREE LOT by Shane E. Bondi

2am, we’re up on top of the green and white striped tent with zip ties, cans of Lone Star beer and a three-foot Christmas tree. It’s the night before Thanksgiving, a warm and breezy unlit hour in Austin, Texas. Below us, a 60- x 40-foot arena of Christmas trees, some stacked like cordwood, some on […]

Contributor Bios for Issue 3 Fall 2010

Issue 3 Fall 2010 JOY AL-SOFI currently teaches English in Hong Kong. She has worked in the high-tech industry and before that practiced law in both Oregon and Texas. Her work includes poetry, fiction and non-fiction and she has been published in the USA and Hong Kong. She has done theater reviews for community radio […]

Primary Sidebar

Recently Published

  • MAYDAY Staff Poll: Best “Break Up With the Job” Films
  • Roost Profusion
    by Karen George
  • Stigmata
    by Gabriella Graceffo
  • Speaks the Dark Lobe
    by L. I. Henley
  • Resonance
    by Ginny Bitting

Trending

  • Eight Contemporary Female Irish Artists to Fall In Love With Immediately
    by Aya Kusch
  • MAYDAY Staff Poll: Best “Break Up With the Job” Films
  • Caterpillar by Dragana Mokan
    translated from the Serbian by John K. Cox
  • I Know Who Orville Peck Is
    by Robin Gow
  • Roost Profusion
    by Karen George
  • Resonance
    by Ginny Bitting
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Footer

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Business


Reprint Rights
Privacy Policy
Archive

Engage


Open Positions
Donate
Contact Us

Copyright © 2023 · New American Press

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.