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 .

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

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

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This chewed sweet and sour garlic / this asymmetric leg of Greta Garbo / this involuntary grotto of silence / this unpublished premonition of a stiff kiss / this anticyclone in the topography of a sigh / this genteel lubricant of bovine orgasms / this kyriopascha obsession of turning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