Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

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

" 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...