Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

each heartache is the science of claws… dashing across quiet ocean floors shadows breed in my veins

Hero to die a hero gripping at the moon adjusting to the gloom children playing in the rain when anger twinkles and shadows breed in my veins I hear this song: I never meant to start a war …just wanted you to let me in

sadness is the symmetry of balance… it makes you hefty in all the wrong places because it knows you

he disappeared like a fragrance, while I aged, lived half my life in hollowed caves unable to find my way back

Submissions are open for the Third Issue of Undertow Tanka Review Kindly submit up to 10 previously unpublished  tanka, tanka art, &/or  10 sequence. “Undertow Tanka Submission” to: undertowtanka @ gmail . com Or use Contact Form to the right *** by November 30, 2014 / third Issue to be online by December 6, 2014 At the end of your submission, please include your full name and country of residence. All rights revert to authors upon publication. Your tanka must not be under consideration elsewhere or submitted to any contest. Hopefully this will become a print Review in the near future. We accept submissions year-round. Best wishes, Sergio Ortiz, Editor

i wish her a frail voice that says goodbye forever— not even death in a distant place chases away my sorrow

sea debris mixed with froth left by the tide… I reminisce on the joy of rooms that smell like herbs

sea iris fragile flower— gulls drift on waves like paper boats

Pockets my bitter life a colorful concert hall that took all my love— there’s no such thing  as stillness  on a heavenly island sea lover under the darkened sky with pockets full of sage and calamus… touch the heart that is under you

he knocked on my hotel door and met me with a smoke… I took off the gray, my heart  pounding  in its bloated stall

I made myself a clan, and my clan scattered— I watched starlings swirl through layers of clear skies

I marry a ghost to slaughter him with love on the lost child of a desert continent where light turns to what it touches

my instinct is to head for the gutter and stomp my foot in the puddle... call it magic cutting me in two

again two stepping  on your grave... I take logic to bed and rise beside a monster

I watched you undress that Indian summer  and my guts tightened… imagining the rain on you  when there was no rain

alone thinking about the instant I turned memory into blissful sorrow and let it marinate my heart

alone at the foot of my mother’s grave beneath a morphine moon I try to tell her I lost the kettle to the well

Street Art                                                 poem by Sergio Ortiz

I am your outlawed twilight your closed fist filled with soaring silence   my mother tongue is love

a hearse turns down the footpath of dust and the cantor sings . . . there is silence a stripping of life forever

“oblivion: we sleep our dreamless sleep” you bulldoze our cemeteries Nazi Germany? No, Iran! Citation: Abdul-Baha, Secret of a Divine Civilization

silence is no longer possible in the color divide of America—pain tips hearts carving a groove in stone

northern whiteness a flight of angels came to my bedside it’s all in the sea, they whispered… the white sea of America? she got the cold white sea of the north cold and greedy concerned about somebody stealing her lollipop 

embarrassed with nowhere to hide accused of piling up a rock wall when my windows were already sealed

the faint sound of water running down the alp reminds me of another sunrise tucked away in your arms

silence piled up all week like snow falling on bare branches yet I have not been muzzled Citation: Bill Collins, Silence

Undertow Tanka Review  is now open for submissions We are also looking for Art and Photography. Sergio Ortiz, editor

marriage a little time and a few tears before we are all equal— larks in flight

black boys a rude anarchy of song dance and loving... nomadic wanderings

you're making the rounds searching for words clues to where I keep the keys of my imagination you have time on your hands now that aging has carried you to the last shore — is he stealing, can I trump him? — the envy of a new identity, the terrible envy of a new experience drills a hole in your heart and I wake with the full expression of joy the blissful joy of knowing you search me out you search all of  me for a clue and find nothing but the original inspired by your hounding… come, listen to wolf howl 

so much depends on the grief I tote into your house— I was nothing but a bitch & all the world was filth & sorrow  

Ebola to the desert where redemption is free ... Ebola, a faraway transparency, a swig of blood, a touch? West Africa just sank into the sea— redemption held up the shredded   faces drenched in tears what comes next, will we see the corpses flying above our heads? this jail inside a jail inside a sinking desert

to the desert where redemption is free ... Ebola, a faraway transparency, a gulp of wind, a sneeze?

high in the golden skyline sunset spreads with such beauty— what am I to become, a hopeful man in a room ?

a child lays his fingers on my hand ... the healing gossamer of a gentle touch