Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

The Map of Amsterdam  What does love search for  if not to grow wings  and become a hermaphrodite.  Is it not the obsession of the loved one  to burn your summer until you cook like escargot and die? (I was kneeling in front of him, my mouth on his hardness. His knees trembled and swayed. When I looked up  his eyes were closed and he asked: Do you love me?) Love, immobile happiness  of the swamp. Who was he to my intimate places to ask me that discomforting question? Did his wings carry the same dark dirt  as my map? Had he found my scent in Paris and lost it in the canals of Amsterdam? Had he found that place in me— the where, where he could always return? ii. I had fallen in love with a man  who had a name to protect.  I shut myself in the bedroom for days  buried under shame. Friends brought me look-a-likes, but it only made me smell of bitter sweat and dead gardenias.  I’d listen to them speak as if from a far distance, eyelids heavy,  like stones swollen with salty wetness, cheeks

Seventy Eight He was about mother’s age and stature when she died four years ago; stout and short but graceful, with the buoyancy of fresh foxglove bursting forth in summer. He’d hang a hammock and go for a walk on the beach. Wading to his hips  as his feet  pressed  the wet sand;  salt seasoned  the expression  of joy  on his face. Two bongo players about his age, black as his shirt, struck a harmony of rhythms he could not ignore. The sun reflecting on his face emanated the happiness of an old freedom-song recaptured. For a brief moment, he eluded winter. Soon it would be time to return to retirement and the hammock, dream about a good dance partner.