Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

A found tanka poem rough seas when it seemed the Lord was sleeping …* a dissident nun hiding under the cover of rapture* ___________________________ *A found tanka poem:  Pope Benedict bidding an emotional farewell at his last general audience * Unholy Women BY chris abani

Indian summer clouds chase clouds through the puddles cicadas … the imprint of things already gone skinny dipping on an abandoned beach… the moon’s gaze frozen in its tracks a hunted deer blends with the frost hungry …a magician in her kitchen the call of a cuckoo my body grows old one point on the horizon she never reaches moon calendar

hablan los temores como ríos que cruzan el mar mis vestimentas te saludan como desiertos que huelen a llaga llaga que huele al naufragio de mi cansancio al pasto resucitado entre las llanuras de un pueblo que no ha llorado a sus muertos hablo desde el temor de un aeropuerto sucio, vandalizado por la madrugada de un acuerdo que se ríe del verdor de nuestras montañas   

if a rainbow knew loneliness and fear could it be a rainbow, am I just another faggot drifting toward the edge

why share you? I spring forth from the ecstasy of being a lily and become a legend while you hide in the bosom of another

the end of questions… you try to run your hand over my face  but  you’re fattened with betrayal wavering among the bamboo

I live on an island  stained with dry blood…  a man-moth  filled with battered moonlight  cutting through palmettos

you grasp my hand steer it to a place beyond maps… I am scared by the shock of arrival the raw landscape 

I am the map of a wet dreary town… we exchange secrets in whispers lilies bend beneath our bodies

I am what is left of his life the black map describing his voyage, of deep descent into himself

my hair scratches his dreams… among the ribbons a tongue bitten by the language of assault  

my body grows old the call of a lonely cuckoo

hungry …a magician in her kitchen

  if my life were a map   it would be one of a man   in the snow…   picking mushrooms   at the edge of dread

there's not a single wind that doesn’t know my shadow... dead butterflies      overpower the dawn light on my eyelids

skinny dipping on an abandoned beach… under the moon’s gaze

pizza... I can’t resist  a third slice

I pray I won’t die alone in some dark corner of a hospital ward— singing an opus of horseshit and pearls

I've been wondering: Do things happen when you drink too much. Or is it just me and my twisted fishnet imagination.

December Lights Back then, under a cold December sun, you’d arrived naked.  I’d ask for permission so you could to stay under my shadow. You’d close your eyes and open your skin, to walk me through brief appearances of galaxies, infinite transit of heartbeats, death strolling down our legs.

sparrows peeped as I walked to the drugstore… searching for the day when nothing remains but a quivering mayfly

http://www.poetserv.org/SRR36/ortiz.html Published in Salt River Review Sergio Ortiz Topography this is my story and place of birth a wheelchair a body wrapped in a sack a childhood jerked around like an unwarranted curse and the stubborn useless desire for a pair of tailored hands climbing up my thighs   Timeless You, in my gravest hour, perfumed with silence—what images caused your fruit to fall?  You left me shooting cannonballs at non-existent stars. Nothing ever removed the water you gradually painted on my lips, no theatres, nightclubs, tuxedos. Not even jetliners or churches.

http://www.thiszine.org/poetry/good-morning-gulliver Published in THIS LITERARY MAGAZINE Good Morning Gulliver by Sergio Ortiz Welcome to my day Gulliver, the dogma of “no strings attached” embellish my fingers and toes.  Welcome to the nausea tranquilized by the calla’s bribe allowing the animal beneath the skin to sleep.  Welcome to my Mapplethorpe’s finger fuck, three dimensional and stepping-off what’s left of hair, lips, eyes with all of its deleterious offspring fastening a rope around my neck to asphyxiate the desire to hate or love.  Welcome to the libretto of my aging crevices touching and melting no one.

http://shamrockhaiku.webs.com/currentissue.htm Published in the current issue of Shamrock Haiku last summer day – her parasol blackens  the rose -- Sergio Ortiz (Puerto Rico)

listen to me, seagulls that cry like a great sad wheel, the day mother died I rode a horse for hours