Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Las Musas Inquietantes ¿Madre, en tu segunda muerte quien ata el pañuelo que sella tu boca? Las apariencias descienden con rostro anónimo, musas inquietantes que rondan mi moisés, mi cordura.  Pídele a Ariel te acicale   con ubre de vaca, o baños tibios de sal, pues yo estoy de fiesta. He vuelto a vivir.  Madre estoy vivo. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz May 31, 2010

          I just had three poem accepted at The Blotter Magazine:    "She's a homophobic...," "Of The Boar," and one more poem whose title I can't remember right now.  I will be removing those poems by the end of the day from the blog.             The Blotter Magazine is one of those magazines I follow, like Autumn Sky, Touch, and the excellent journal,  The Tower.  I follow more than just the journals I have mentioned.  Hopefully soon I will be writing about what motivates me to follow certain Journals  Some of which have never accepted any of my poems.   Others where I am certain I will never see anything submitted by me published.  Yet,  to me these journals are making the difference in the literary scene of American Poetry, and in some cases the poetry coming out of Australia and the UK.             I want the editor from Zygote in ...

The Three of Us Poem accepted for publication.  I will put it up when it gets published. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, May 30, 2010

The Sugarcane Harvest:  A photographic chapbook Sergio Ortiz avantacular press 2010  http://www.scribd.com/doc/32167032/The-Sugarcane-Harvest

Exposed I’ve searched for you again in the rising illusions of three hundred and sixty five dawns, yet none court me like before. The moonstruck magic dissolved inside my unattended plot. Its gardener, exposed within my mirror, tried tricking me with kisses.  From where I stand there is no one to pay for the moon’s washboarding.  Crows and scarabs   have first bids on my mortgage. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, May 29, 2010

My Knees The months spent by your bedside left me scavenging for healthy bits and pieces of my own body.  A week could pass before I found a foot among the ruins you left at Treblinka. And when it took two months to find an arm I’d crack and fall apart again. Now, I do not bend my knees. My hours are crowded with escaped cocks my mouth shapes  and puts back together with reinforced steel. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, May 27, 2010

Yes, DMAX sent me a virus early this morning. It is not the first time it does it. Actually it is the third time it does it. They are part Verizon in Puerto Rico and and Claro in Central Americo. As soon as I get a chance I will write a few essays about this in both English and Spanish. Because in reality were do not really have any freedom on this island. And those of us connected to the Internet who have been profiled in the past are still profiled, our telephone conversations are still tapped and everything we do is still scrutinzed. DMAX are the Butt pluggers of the government on this island. But from now on they are fucked with me because they are not going to shut me up. Nunca mas, I am not going to ever be quiet, better dead than silent, that also goes to my religion and to any and all poetry forums that might want to harbor the idea of shuting me up. It is never going to happen.  My computer froze for about an hour and a half.   I could not log into my email a...

There are the forums that act as Moderator schools.  I have hardly ever been to one that has any Hispanics; I will say it right off.  The reason?  Your guess is as good as mine is, but I will talk about my personal experience.  I was at Able Muse for a very short time, constantly under pressure from a female moderator who had read my pm’s to a friend (something she should have never done) that just happens to have my same name, Sergio.  She decided I was trying to seduce him online, virtually, with a poem that I had dedicated to him.  She insinuated in front of the entire community that I was trying to, well, let’s not use the word just yet, let’s say, take him to my virtual bed.  I had no idea where he lived or what he looked like.  I didn’t know his age, and that was important to me.  I don’t go to bed with anyone over the age of 50 or under the age of 37 (actually I have not gone to bed with anyone for years and I don’t intend to do so)....

Then there is the issue of the Journal that never responds to a submission unless it has selected one of your poems.  The truly sad thing about this kind of a journal is that they’re allowed to advertize in places like Doutrope’s Digest.  It makes you kind of wonder if the people managing these literary search engines are, or have ever been, writers themselves?  To me this sends a rather sad  but clear message:  We don’t really care about the writer, or what writers contribute, our interests remain focused on what is convenient to us.  This is the height a self-centeredness attitude can reach, much like a one-sided love affair.  It feels like what I would imagine a battered woman, or man, feels after a beating.  But I’ll bet my right arm and an eye, these journals swamped by submissions.  It’s a sign of our times, we reward laziness and a lack of professionalism among us, in Spanish we say, en el “gremio.”  After all, that is what we ar...

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My Grandfather's old house in Rio Piedras The Suffocated Terrace “El silencio es el refugio de los desvalidos, pero también es la madriguera de los cómplices." Jorge Gómez Jiménez, Letralia a corpse buried under a mound of coconuts at the hour of the early breeze the red ground where heat and light are born like eggs with chorizo the stench of vomit a dead man’s journal I opened and read the first entry today I went to talk about my pension plan with the people at the suffocated terrace and it was like a revelation like walking down the steps of a twisted scar to the crack at the bottom of my back the journey was sprayed with vinegar I remembered grade school we had better toys and our shoes were made of leather hardly anyone complained about their DNA or taxes and I was single a kid but I paid taxes nothing like I do now to the same people at the suffocated terrace should I say suffocating or call it The Suffocate is it a terrace now that it’s walled and...

They Murmur This poem has been accepted for publication. ©   Sergio A. Ortiz 22 de mayo del 2010

Submissions and the online workshops: In preparation for flying on my own!  Part 2 Of course, whom these poets / moderators favor in the forums change.  They are seasonal just like everything else in the macro - micro cycles of our contingent existence.  In some cases, and I say it only because I have seen it happen, even the moderators are replaceable.  Loyalties change with the rhetoric that goes on behind closed quarters.  In some cases, the result is very destructive.  I remember that brilliant woman, an excellent poet, a so, so moderator, who disappeared for a few months because of cancer -- only to come back and find she had been replaced, permanently replaced.   The reason?   Now, that I have had time to reflect on the issue, I realize she was not applying that push for a mainstream poetics in the forum.  The excuse, she had forgotten to fill out some paperwork while she was recovering from therapy. I have no idea if sh...

Murmuran This poem has been accepted for publication.              ©   Sergio A. Ortiz, 21 de mayo de 2010

Among those that Tackle Trash to Miguel Hernandez on his centenary This poem has been accepted for publication Entre Aquellos que Enfrentan la Basura a Miguel Hernández en su centenario Este poem ha sido aceptado para publicacion. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz May 21, 2010

Submissions and the online workshops : In preparation of flying on my own. I can’t remember the exact date I joined my first online workshop.  I was on very strong medication.  That year cursed me with four or five serious bipolar episodes.  A hurricane settled right over my hometown, Jayuya, and it felt like a physical expression of the metaphorical world I was living in.  By the way, I took a picture of the hurricane when its eye was over my apartment building.  I had to step out into the open space.  The sky had suddenly turned yellow.           An American friend from the States living in Arecibo brought me a Toshiba laptop.  He gave it to me and begged me to stop taking all the medication I was taking.   But I was convinced that if I stopped I would commit suicide, or do something worse.  I began to write about my pain, the pain provoked by the loss of my grandmother, my uncle, my lover, and finally ...

The one thing that made racism a lot more devastating in Philadelphia was the fact that it came from all directions.  That was something I never expected.  I was white enough to be hated by blacks, dark enough to be hated by whites, and educated enough to be hated by my own.  To the people in my religion in Philly, mostly whites and blacks from the city, I had the last name of a dear friend (I say friend, but we had not yet met), Lucas Ortiz, who just happened to be as loud, opinionated, and as visible as I was.  No surprise there, he was a a Social Work academic and we all know they tend toward the left.  Everyone thought we were brothers.  We shared the same vision of how racism had affect our religious community, and so neither of us was popular.  Until I reached out to the blacks in my religious community.  Mr. Morris, an HIV positive black man (Lucas was also living with HIV), moved in to my house.  That meant I had greater contact with...

Phone Calls, Pleas for Oneness, and Cucarachitas -What shall I buy? ¿Qué me compraré?  -Lo que quiera usted, whatever you want, dócil Martinita. -Didn’t you just say that a lot louder than the rest. -Kikiriki, was the rooster’s response to all this mess. -Uuu, croac’d the frog next. -I see you’re getting all pretti’d up and beautiful  Martina. Wan’na … go out on a date? -On a date, at night? Sorry, there’s a little matter  of trust we must address before I go out with YOU at night. -I thought you’d ask me about my croac, croac, croac? -No, Señor frog, I may not be pretty  but I haven't survived this long for nothing. (That was when el ratoncito Peréz joined the conversation.)  -Mister ratón, what do you do at night, asked la cucarachita. -Give me a call Martina, but make sure it’s not after ten, not before seven, and never at eight.  I watch my novela at eight. -Ah, sighed la cucarachita: A ratoncito always calls cucarachitas first....

Racism and the submitting Hispanic Poet Three years ago, when I first started submitting my poems to literary journals I came across my first challenges in the writing world.  I did not have the experience to immediately identify the reasons for some of the things that were happening, but one of these challenges was definitely making me uncomfortable and I was going to burst if I kept quiet about it.  So I wrote to these journals that had submission managers and told them that I could not submit because the managers did not have any of the US territories listed separately from the States. Every time I wanted to submit something through a submission manager, the process came to a halt as soon as the manager asked me for a "State," much like the day I went to apply for a job as an assisted-life social worker for adult Down Syndrome clients at a Philadelphia facility.  That experience came back to me like a ferocious lion.  I spent over half an hour trying to convin...

Illegal #6 this poem was accepted for publication.  I will put it back up 30 days after it gets published. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, May 18, 2010

Words The incidental whore, with The Accidental Tourist. The view from here in A Room with a View. Once a thief, always a thief? Once a Lady, always a Lady! Whore.  A word that describes a youthful challenge. But, now what? View.  I took down the windows last March, on the wake of my fifty ninth birthday. Sixty. Accidental names for numbers, words with windows, views reaching out and stepping on proverbs. When I’m dead if you call me a whore I’ll come back and shake your bed, make you think it’s an earthquake, hijo’e puta, ja-ja! ©   Sergio A. Ortiz May 17, 2010

Adèle This poem was taken down because it has been accepted for publication. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, May 16, 2010

Write Yourself Sober: Memoirs of a Puerto Rican not from El Barrio A veces te sientes como si anduvieras en el hoyo negro de alg ú n universo recién descubierto, meciéndote en la nada, esperando que un día vengan por ti. Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Epidemiología I just got home from a workshop given by the award winning Puerto Rican writer Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro.  She was great, more like fabulous, yes, fabulous is the word I am looking for.  She did what I expected a good experienced writer would do, which was; turn me on to a few “new to me” Puerto Rican writers and put me to work.  She read two of her own poems, after which I mumbled: “que fuerte,” because her poems were in that right in your face persona I love to assume myself.  She read from a couple of short stories written by contemporary Puerto Rican writers that were amazing, and we went right into writing a poem.  In this case it was a queer poem because this is all part of  “La Tercera Jorna...

Transparencia “Se va el caimán, se va el caimán…” ¿De qué está hecho usted, mimo de palmas y pies pintados con henna?  ¿Cuánto más aceptara el aire envenenado que le deja respirar ese maldito caimán norte ñ o?   Endeble marco de mierda, afine la malla de organza para la serigrafía que su imaginación intenta pintar.   Cuándo seque la lona no se olvide de limpiar la cárcel atestada de recuerdos, los ecos de estudiantes inocentes asesinados a balazos en los balcones de nuestra Autónoma Universidad.