Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Paper Thin Walls He speaks in a scorching voice inventing what he cannot promise. I wonder if my neighbor listens to my toilet flushing, believing the other is always lying in wait.

Nation Look mother, I peeled away your anger and stopped building sand castles by the sea. The nation is riddled with thieves and no door opens easily. My childish dreams? Fulfilled, and laid to rest. 

poem was entered into a competition

The Deadly Mirror Inconclusive thoughts are what I hear inside my head: because the mind’s eye lit the sun.   Must I give up the world to be saved?  Shall I forget his lips on my nape to write what I perceive to be a new earth? My imagination flutters like a swallow, and cries like a hungry baby. I sit and play the saxophone in self contemplation.   The mirror tells the truth, but not enough to merit constant thought. I am folding inward over and over.  Six inches of words and I am betrayed, hypnotized into believing I have achieved all there is to achieve in this art. Therefore, I start a new contemplation of the swallow and I listen to the fragment of phrases like Imitations, Life Studies and Notebook.  I will never find the one flower that sustains all the earth.

at the hospital a sudden change in temperature,  malady of autumn I am utterly empty only a name tag to identify me as survivor tulips search for me but in this winter light I have wanted to efface myself the air is calm yet tulips fill it like a loud noise I must concentrate commit myself to rest, place all my attention on taking it easy

Headache Soon I’ll be a fugitive of my own skin, raw. I’ve chosen the rare sensation of  tainted blood to outfit my bow of thorns.  Today I will not clutch a fist in the wind’s sneer, nor will I disenchant my examiners. I will wait for the postman to deliver the world turning from my rented attic; wait for the headache to ease, or go away all together.

Rain and Sound Listen to me as one listens to the rain: we are distracted once again.  Night approaches with its dense cloak of fear, an assault for which there is no cure. It is never winter here, yet the hibiscus have been censored like men trying to show their affection for each other.  Air, water, and flower there is no weight in these words. Night has the figurations of mist. Listen to me as one listens to the rain : (Censor my desire for writing you poems.) Not attentive, not distracted, only as if I were the rain. Hear me out until the asphalt is wet.  You are you in night steam.  You enter my eyes as your steam crosses the street.  The sun does not varnish the curve. We are both steam.   Steam of another censored flower, lotus.