Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Outfits I stopped pushing salvation on inner city streets after the funeral. Maples lining the road home took me to the kimono and the baby, anniversary gifts from Tent. Rubin changed clothes as soon as we got home from Sunday school: toreror, mariachi, prime ballerina. It was difficult to keep a straight face in the middle of an argument with a little cross-dresser playing in front of you. The beginning of autumn, that’s when he started collecting the feathers. My baby, fourteen, lifeless. We found the first one outside a Mud Wrestling Bar & Grill. It had the Lords Prayer written on the barbs. Soon enough, they were coming from all over the world. He loved to collect them. Close, Tent was very close to his son. Closer than the rope he used. He couldn’t take the impact of Rubin’s passing. I needed to look in the mirror, put on the kimono, cover my arms with the red yellow leaves of the sash, and hide the teeth marks. © Sergio A. Ortiz 2008

At the Church of 80% Sincerity it was no crime to be born a delicate male, but reaching puberty while you're opening up a frog in biology class ruined your sex life for good. Games were another gray area. No such thing as “hard” contact during basket-ball practice was allowed, and it wasn't because of the balls, or the running style. So, I took ballet three nights a week, studied sincerity percentages. It was not easy. Everyone I knew hid 20% of their life at the Church of 80% Sincerity. © Sergio A. Ortiz 2008 first published in Children, Churches, and Daddies

India I did not fail to see your shroud cover my hands, like a mother greeting a son with garlands. What was this light you possessed that guided me out of the dark, wheeled my thoughts in navy blue, tendered my voice, and spiraled into a dance? The hands holding up invisible walls, carried my sail to streams untouched. Hands that fenced passions and cushioned the blows each time I fell. Chant a bhajan melody while the fingers of my right hand form a crown lotus soaring in mid air. My left hand imitates a wave caught in the vortex of fate. My eyes look away from physical forms as if all the toiling in the fields had set them on fire in celebration. Clattering kartals accompanied by humming drones, and chiming manjiras, sitars and nals, complete the circle swaying rhythms in perfection. Why do you till my eyes in your fields of saffron? © Sergio A. Ortiz 2008

Searching We are both close to fear, my brother and I, boom babies, witnesses to an age saturated with violence. Him, a virgin at twenty-five. Me, used and afraid by sixteen. I want to hug my brother tell him how much I’ve missed him. Night has not been the same without a sentinel looking out the window, searching. Thank you for understanding what it is to be a man without the bling hanging on my neck or a gun in hand. I want us to see the dawn while our faces turn to each other, and the clothes we wear burn off. © Sergio A. Ortiz 2008

Peak Oil We read about the old dying from the cold. Fifteen days later there was no food. When it happened a third time politicians got mobbed on the streets. As if law makers could keep away cardinals perched on the outstretched arms of concrete scarecrows. © Sergio A. Ortiz 2008

On the Brink Merchants of war, you hide in what you wish were called, “the Mansions of Heaven,” while a trigger is squeezed to death on the street. I have a bird that whistles, but it doesn’t stop me from crying. I heard some students were crushed for walking in each other’s dreams at a love-in. Too bad I couldn’t be there with them. I’m a dada bird on the brink of extinction, need to get away from Oxford, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. © Sergio A. Ortiz 2008