Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

The key you have not lost is there between those spaces, not by or in, but flanked between here and there, living like a fugitive on your skin. It is a prelude to our memoirs, the text of a poem fused with nectarines, an exploration through Copper Canyon, visions of Haiti’s angels licking my ears, a hypnotic dance on sands matching the colors that mesh upon your hips, an experiment we refuse to put down, an invitation to cross the doorway of the home I no longer occupy. The key you have not lost is not the manual for a digital camera, or calendar entries for next month’s readings. It is not the Popular Mechanics article you wrote to put food on our table, or a classified ad on craigslist. It wants to be the bungee jump into the pangs of a deer in heat, the obituary of bolted doorknobs, or a listing for all the vacant walls on which we'll scribble our graffiti. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, April 2010

Tristan Breathe, let the lepers out.   Drift to the edge of my cloud and speak. Find the fire, burn my locust storm.   Persuade me to sleep in a matrix full of sails that drift disoriented yet attuned to the wind.   Touch me like an innocent man willing to let go of his campfire in the middle of this circular stage, the classroom where pupils are attentive to the magician’s tricks.   Dream and let that dream flood my vigilant ghosts, impostors of windflowers and silk. ©   Sergio A. Ortiz,