Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Today I went to Pavia Hospital in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, because I thought I was having a heart attack. It took them close to 5 hours to run test and take care of me and only because I opened my mouth and demanded attention. There was a disoriented man, a junky, possibly with a life threatening disease, in the same eme rgency ward where I was. No one paid this man any attention until I started taking pictures of him. Then they gave him some food and something to cover his torso, but I never saw a doctor get near him. If you go alone to a hospital in Puerto Rico, if you live alone and have to provide outpatient care without the proper help of a professional, if you or your family do not know how to defend yourself from these abusive institutions, chances are you will not come out alive from a hospital in Puerto Rico .

La Castañeta

Estuve temeroso y fui la castañeta, juglar blanco con la cara pintada de negro. No fui la coleta del torero que amortigua golpes o señala el honor su retiro. Castañeta de Zambra Mora sacudiendo mis caderas, reposando tu palma sobre mi ombligo. Baile nupcial tormentoso, palillo de fiesta tentadora. © Sergio A. Ortiz 25 de febrero de 2010

Mama got AIDS from an enemy soldier

We walked five miles to the nearest waterhole. A baldin’ boogeyman convoy left her unconscious by the roadside. We ran—three little birds (cryin’ and cryin’) . My brother stayed in my head—boogeyman’s body sucking his breath (yellin’ and yellin’) yeah (yellin’ and yellin) . He’ll live, or I’ll shoot him myself. Death (wow - wow - wow) sprawled like a lizard. Papa (whoo - whoo - whoo) tore off his ankle bracelet and went for the gun. © Sergio A. Ortiz Published in the 2010 February Issue of The Houston Literary Review

This Wants to Be

The Imagination This chewed sweet and sour garlic / this asymmetric leg of Greta Garbo / this involuntary grotto of silence / this unpublished premonition of a stiff kiss / this anticyclone in the topography of a sigh / this genteel lubricant of bovine orgasms / this kyriopascha obsession of turning the abstract into the concrete. The Words These oblique cartographies / these choral songs with those far-off glints / these cesti gloves from the Forum of Augustus / these small moments of our “visions of paradise.” The Impossible This malnourished duffel bag / this cement stuffed tooth painter/ this resolute algebraic cat / this invisible postcard to the invisible man / this rumble that startles a child’s mouth. © Sergio A. Ortiz first published in Whispers&Screams Magazine, 24 February, 2010

Illegal

February 23, 2010

1. She shares a room with eight strangers. None of them know where to buy money grams. Her face flushes at the grocery store, but she still looks straight into my eyes and asks: Can I walk there? Which way is it? 2. Jobs are scarce, so he eats what he finds in dumpsters near the house, squats on a vacant lot that floods in autumn. He doesn’t say it, but he’s scared of fever. Knows that if he dies, back home, Juan will stop by the bar and flick quarters in the jukebox. Jose will tell dirty jokes at his wake until four in the morning, while Pedro recounts the story of the irate husband shooting at his naked butt flying over the fence. But here, he doesn’t have a name, he’s constantly cold and unnoticed. 3. She makes it difficult to ignore the wet clothes on a man’s back as he wanders into la migra’s office for a 24-hour stay, or a free jet ride home. She’s too alarmed to remember the two daughters left behind. Umbrellas keep her in the shade while officers bring...

Edificando la nación: prótesis + circuito cerrado + panoplia = Infierno

Os cortaron los testículos con fuego, luego insertan la prótesis (un dispositivo de circuito cerrado) esperanzados en captar la deslumbradora panoplia de maricas marchando derechitas hacia la visión del infierno según Rivera Schatz: a Spanish tea party . — ¿ Que es un Spanish tea party ? — Yo no sé. ¡Búscalo en el diccionario urbano! © Sergio A. Ortiz 20 de febrero de 2010

My brother and his son in my apartment in Jayuya

I made all of the arts and crafts in the living room, including the knitted bed cover my nephew is sitting on.

My brother and my stepfather. My mother and me.

Me, my sister Priscila, and my brother Carlos in Chicago

My brother the cop, his wife, and my stepmother. This was also my apartment in Jayuya, PR

plataformas entre el odio y la guirnalda hay un lobo esperantista entre el cacto y la dulzaina hay rudeza de viento entre el borracho y la brújula hay hedor de distancias entre el pergamino y el volcán hay borrones de luz entre la zarzuela y los mayas hay institutrices neuróticas— poetes maudits entre la adivina y el granizo hay un riachuelo y un francotirador © Sergio A. Ortiz 19 de febrero de 2010

Efrain Lopez Neri, Puerto Rican actor.

February 18, 2010

To My Leaf Storm

February 18, 2010

To My Leaf Storm Don’t fear my touch. Sustenance from windmills slowly gathers around our skin: leaves never fall, fragments spiralling into your smile, tears humidifying our lips. Don’t whisper to an alien ear. Look away to my lap, brush my breast. Edges sooth the tip of a finger on my back, deeper fragments. Don’t list the possibilities. Keep stretching our secret. Swim in my hair, flaunt your smile on my torso, until the fragments and the leaves come to a sudden stop. © Sergio A. Ortiz 2009, first published in All Rights Reserved a literary journal. Issue, Margin of Error, 2010

Chavela Vargas

February 18, 2010

" Isabel Vargas Lizano (born April 17, 1919) is a Mexican (Costa Rican born) singer. She is especially known for her rendition of rancheras genre - a folkloric musical genre widely popular in Mexico - but she is also recognized for her contribution to other popular Latin American song genres. She has been an influential interpreter in the Americas and Europe, muse to figures such as Pedro Almodóvar, hailed for her haunting performances, and called "la voz áspera de la ternura", the rough voice of tenderness. Her first album, Noche de Bohemia (Bohemian Night), was released in 1961 with the professional support of José Alfredo Jiménez, one of the foremost singer/songwriters of the Mexican cancion ranchera. Vargas has recorded over eighty albums thereafter. She was hugely successful during the 1950s, 1960s and the first half of the 70s, touring in Mexico, the United States, France and Spain and was close to many prominent artists and intellectuals of the time, includin...

Untitled

February 17, 2010

Dedicatorias

February 16, 2010

Al enemigo: un cara a cara. Al insomnio: peras o manzanas, una zanahoria dulce. A la espera: un celador Sur Africano blanco dormido sobre una mina de diamantes. Al salón de clases: un reloj, la sobriedad del agua. A la lejanía: lo que recuerdo de Omar, un resplandor sigiloso, desnudo y húmedo en lo más profundo de mis pupilas. Al amor: una tregua, y otra tregua. © Sergio A. Ortiz febrero 16 del 2010

Lucecita Benitez y Alberto Carrion singing a song that is actually a poem from our greatest poet, Luis Pales Matos

February 16, 2010

Heraclitus: Coral Sea to Black Sea expedition

El hombre de las palomas

Grandfather and granddaughters / Old San Juan

Tempestuous - Tomorrow I hope to be reading at The Poet's Passage