Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

we played in a athenaeum of sunflowers... before rain brought down the winter sky

trees rattle I count the stars in  the winter sky... the hours, matrons reading  my lips, watch my thighs

time is nothing but a souvenir worn smooth... a photograph of me walking in an alien body

http://undertowtankareview.blogspot.com/2015/01/submission-for-issue-5-undertow-tanka.html Kindly submit up to 10 previously unpublished tanka, tanka art, &/or 10 tanka sequence,  10 haiku. “Undertow Tanka Submission” to: undertowtanka @ gmail . com Or use Contact Form to the right *** by MARCH 23, 2015 / 5 th     Issue to be online by MARCH 30, 2015 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.   *** Yes, we are accepting Haiku submissions Best wishes, Sergio Ortiz, Editor

last dream  before waking... morning fog

where the blossoms fall like kisses on the pier bring L’Incomparable or you'll never see your husband again

on the way to Monkey Island... scattering his ashes

I don’t remember enough of my life to write a biography… I was naked on the beach, the hours seized me inch by inch

there was a time when blue was the color of distance and failure, an empty room where ghosts lulled me to sleep

alive and well in the age of color blindness... I stand naked for no one but myself

sleepwalking on the way to Jericho difficulties vanish *Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around citation:  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

where is  your native land? dipped in mud... my head covered  with the thin blanket of poverty

agoraphobia... who can blame me for declining to defy such whiteness with the snowshoe cruelty of tracks

refugees on their last legs-- playground stones in the cupped hand of a lifeless child

there was a time when I chopped down trees, beat my head praying against a seawall... my innocence lost in dreams

painkillers... what are you waiting for touch me like you do

you dream of having a Chinese garden in a forest full of mirrors  I draw a map of myself in the sand a draft of the theory of zero

there are birds trapped in those shadows they're bursting  with untold happiness... bird songs awaken the dead 

you were seated in the fires of ambivalence -- born into violence I wake up tired of wading through storms of ashes

I've changed the furniture,  rewritten our relationship back  to its beginning...  strangers dancing at a bar  in Amsterdam

beyond grief and grievance Je suis Charlie

breathless moments breaking me down drunk on grief 

standing at the door  pieces of a great mystery

autumn comes with a price… the world caves in on itself, yet at the river's edge a heron lifts in flight

there's nothing here but speech, the words we  fill the dark with hoping for a rescue party knotted in the lines

on the bridge  to my next huge sadness... water

shadows pierced by the sun confetti

don't stop the rain from falling on my wings my eyes  are swimming in your breast... a minute for the two of us

a mountain  of love letters hidden  in the air shaft—  forlorn in a house of sticks

how long have we stood  at the end of the dock, a  wishbone fit to pop

my dreams like kites at the apex of some huge sorrow-- a flapping sound on new year's eve ~~~ after a tanka by Shaku Choku

let me climb these mountain ridges ... my mantra, scuffed by winter winds, heals my bloodshot eyes

confetti a sunrise I faintly remember

poplars mark my pathway gathering bones

Venus with an afro pick letting go of trends

faster than an afterthought staggering butterfly

cornered  by the clouds full moon

what kind of fool lets you go without a fight— sea-dust coats my skin

jealous of the way you’re happy without me… anthills collapse in the rain, six degrees of separation 

nothing to be afraid of even when the night changes— broken coming and going, I climb the ruins of my life