Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Silent A chorus of genuflections filtered through the kitchen ventilator and knelt beside my bed around midnight. I knew Georgina was dead. My rocking chair peeled its mahogany finish in her honor. There were loud knocks at the door: my neighbors standing outside packing axioms and any other thing they could find: guns, crucifixes, shovels. “Hi, we were wondering about the odor?” It’s not coming from here, I’m not quite dead yet. Occasionally, I see apparitions of myself standing by the window, behind the shower curtain, but I still go fly fishing. Mother came to me in a dream last night, gave me the password to a house where boas reincarnate into possessed lizards catching mosquitoes on maracas. She said: everything spoken becomes water, blends. She had me thinking about my space. I am going to stop talking for seven years, but first let me repeat this a few more times: Harmonizing the sacred. Harmonizing the sacred. Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus Copyright © 2008 Sergio A. Ortiz Publi...

On the Day of the Dead On the day of the dead, Pablo put on his pants one mummified foot at a time. It wasn't his fault, rain was the true culprit. Clouds followed his feet for years, poured whenever he tried to cut bread in the City of Glass. His soles cracked, sprouting roots. Julia entertained on her balcony, levitating intimate secrets. People on 42nd Street attributed her faculties to a santero visiting her family on the day she was born. She stood tall and elegant like the mountains to the south of Black Island, Pablo's home. Her face had all the traces of unforgettable pain. They married; Julia, carried down the aisle by old lovers, found the last bottle of rum hidden in the trash before the wedding. She bled life into a gutter, no one recited her verses. No one knew she was ambassador to the Island of Poetry. Pablo was one mummified foot at a time closer to banging pots and starvation, medicine denied, orders from the dictator. They are gone but I keep their marriage...

Intimate You saddle the other me, the one you empty each disappearing dawn, the bulldogger with a bitten lip. I am crowned with psychedelic corollas, dreams beyond dreams. I learn to forget by forgetting. There is nothing left of my ecstasies, or the color of my obsessions, not even the seize of your mouth on my words. Copyright © 2008 Sergio A. Ortiz Published in Origami Condom

He finds the hallway leading to death's wrinkled, Garbo legs. Children standing by their mother's broken mirror have their own boleros to remember. Spiders weave the stench of sour jungle, a vile outbreak of colloquial monsters. My father sings a duo with my father. Copyright © 2009 Sergio A. Ortiz