Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Requiem for Mercedes Sosa Just in case Mercedes returns, in case a bombó or a zampoña bring her back, maybe she’ll return in the gallop of a chacarera , or in the swell of a samba. Hopefully a tango brings her back. And if the songs she left, the palpitations, the flora and fauna (happy to have been conceived by the voice of La Negra ) bring her back: that is to say, in case an airplane doesn’t, or yet another concert, and even then, Mercedes returns with her pure voice purer, and the full-bodied richness of her vocal cords capable of making bread or birds appear. And just in case Mercedes does return, I’m buying two front seats, one to sit down and watch her, another one to dance and sing. 

This tanka was just published in the NeverEnding Story First English-Chinese Bilingual Haiku and Tanka Blog English Original tumbling  through winter she knew she didn't fit... a doll's life trapped inside a young man’s body Sergio A. Ortiz Chinese Translation (Traditional) 蹣跚地 度過冬天 她知道她並不適應 ... 一個洋娃娃的生命被困在 年輕男人的身體裡 Chinese Translation (Simplified) 蹒跚地 度过冬天 她知道她并不适应 ... 一个洋娃娃的生命被困在 年轻男人的身体里

Drought In a tree with three branches, heaven unwinds its sea, placid and without islands. A group of country houses is renewed at the same time as dust of ghost.  A chameleon shivers all night like a gush of underground water. An almond is the plain, a fire of souls.

I told you, they beat us now come down from that cross and follow me

Imperfect Pastoral She began at the edge of the bed, in the wrong city. She had some withered roses in a cardboard vase. At night she weaved, with her veins, a summer coat. She collected bearded vultures and words forbidden by God. One day she touched herself, and liked the smell of fresh ink between her legs. She fell asleep. When she woke death was all of life. There were broken books and scattered papers, open doors and open windows. She was naked like the first time, like when she fell asleep and bit her flesh and drank her blood, like when she was the twilight banging on the door of her belly.

Epistle to future poets Poems are long avenues where our burning rage marches. Everywhere the crying, everywhere a black wall besieged. Could our poetry be a solitary column of dew? It has to be perpetual thunder as long as children stare at a loaf of bread with envy. There are higher things to mourn than lost lovers: the sound of a society finally awakening is more beautiful than the dew, the glittering metal of its anger more beautiful than sea foam. A free man is purer than a diamond.

Indigent I’ve squandered the rainbow, the swallows I set aside for poems are in the red. The account of my sunsets has been frozen. I owe the treasury five thousand fifty butterflies.

Letter to the drummer of my band I want to watch that movie at the cinema I want to see the roses and not see the roses I want to drink café-au-lait, and drink and drink drink this and that and what you have to give and what I have to offer I want to go to the movies but I don’t want to see the movie I want you and him but more you than him more than you or him I want some coke 

To the Economic Board the US Senate wants to Impose on Puerto Rico The crime has been committed, But you’re going to cover it up with sheets, and sheets of paper in television adds, and radio spots. The thick still air, the terror, the ignominy surrounding voices— traffic, life— the crime / has been committed.

sorry but this one has just been submitted.

Sorry but this one has also been submitted

Don’t blame yourself or build paradise out of your faults and miseries, don’t ask your tired nerves for a halo erected out of truth, or demand the unexpected serenity of a vision. Please, try to understand, the world couldn’t care less. Don’t mislead or deceive or fight or turn tomorrow into an opportunity. Don’t plan equilibrium and reason for yourself —always a good shadow. Pay attention to your obsession with the imaginary moon, silver-plate your phantom’s song. Any day’s a good beginning. An hour can be agreed upon. Don’t hurry, it’s like a scuba-diver groping the waters of the sea. Without fear but with the passing grace of a man who has never known to where he is going.

Cover - A Tribute We got there late. Me to your dream and you to my best hour, merman hidden in the cornfields of my body.  Later we lost sight of each other amid the tumult of adolescence. We broke up, widowed before the marriage ever consummated. Fifteen years later we saw each other, me the bard, you the juris doctor. An avalanche of love made me call you the next day. What superhuman beast (perhaps accumulated courage) possessed my body, what lie? What did I say my Troy, my Caesar, my taurine lover, that made you look my way. I can’t remember,  but out of  the sea inside my chest,  my abyss,  primitive animals  emerged  singing:  purple rain, purple rain…

The First Sacred, Joyful, Mystery I didn’t use to smoke but one day Our Lady of Sorrows put her hands on my back, approached my face, and whispered in my right ear: go ahead smoke, give Our Heavenly Father some smoke, and may nobody be warned of his presence.

Death hits me “It’s true, death hits me entirely on my sex” Alejandra Pizarnik Castrated cadaver # 1 Beware of me my love Be careful of the silent one in the desert of the traveler with the empty glass and the shadow of its shadow Castrated cadaver # 2 Now then: who will stop sinking their hand in search of the little girl’s tribute. The rain will pay. The cold will pay. Thunder will pay. for Aurora and Julio Cortazar Castrated cadaver # 3 he says he doesn’t know about love’s death he says that he’s afraid of love’s death he says that love is death is fear he says that death is fear is love he says he doesn’t know Castrated cadaver # 4 “It’s true, death hits me entirely on my sex”

Now this is something completely different from what I have been writing.  It's a political poem.  I hope you enjoy it. You already built that Wall Forgive me Mr. Trump I will not shake your / hand you are not my friend / I cannot welcome you / you are not welcomed / nobody from your party  is welcomed / to this presidential race I want you to say you’re sorry / we are not rapist / we only flee / injustice. I have my hammer. I have tears. I have a backbone. The only thing / I am giving you / is my disapproval. I’ll turn my back  and walk away now.

On a whitewashed wall in the fortified city of your body I come to you slowly. You say something I don't understand. You laugh. Write your name on my abdomen. I walk from the edge of my body to yours. Sleepwalkers like us don't distinguish between reality and desire. To us reality is wider, more tangible, more corporal. It’s a garden in the bedroom, a thick weave of braided hair, an endless hieroglyph tangled in our legs, and rarely can we find someone to decrypt, read, or write it on our bodies.

The inaccessible  I entered  the uncomfortable night of your body — tu amurallada ciudad — with moistened footsteps, and the long creak of the catwalk was lost amid the shouts of stevedores and sailors.   It was midnight before I found your labyrinth. You would be talking to me about the fleeting language of a broken clock, the wings of your Moroccan city, the life of its cobblestones, when suddenly you become the quiet rage, the trembling conversation of doubts: the inaccessible  power  of an orgasm. 

Sorry but I have submitted this piece, I have to take it down.

Sorry, I have to take this one down. I am submitting it to a journal.

This is also Feminist Erotica Today, I allow you to hold my hand in public. But tomorrow, nobody should be surprised if Salome asks for your head on a silver platter, and kisses your mouth with her cold lips from hell.

Sorry! This one just got submitted to a journal.  I have to take it down.

Two aging men together Suddenly, two elderly men cornered on the love corner of their sixty-something bankrupt dreams are witnesses of the epidemic spread of fear and rejection. They are  together. Giving each other what remains of their dignity, pillaging death, and salt. They’ve learned to queer it up without a map, without a condom, with no more radar than their intuition. They distill with patient certainty the fact that there is no better tomorrow for those who seek to be sanctified by the light of the phallus. A hand strings together their grey hairs, their star of David. Who cares if you’re young, you’ll get there too.

For this one you need to know a little Chicano folklore.  More specifically El Coco, something similar in English would be, The Bogyman. For my profile at Grindr.com From man to man, from my place to yours, I follow the lewd riverbed of your venomous snake, but if I find out that you're worthless, I’ll ran away. And the search cycle starts all over again To penetrate your depths is, friendship, provocation in this virtual hubbub. From leisure masturbation to be with you is better, come I'll show you how. I frantically invoke your buttocks, and I enter and go and obey the command of the full-grown mask of your glans. I put my whole humanity inside you, and so as not to make to story long you’ll even stop fearing el coco .

Esta larga espera es como si hubiera muerto un niño. ¿Quién me atrapa el corazón y lo levanta sin apoyo alguno?  

Sorry.  This one entered a competion so it has to be removed

Letter # 3 April 13, 2016 I’ll never hear from you again, I knew that from the time we met. This certainty was so powerful that it’s as if I got news from you at every moment. Post Data: I propose a banquet  for when I’m dead. All you have to do is eat me. This is my response to love. I beg for cannibal communion, a genesis in the other.

I say I am Pessoa or Pound A faceless woman sings while standing on my soul. A drowned siren begs for alms. A child, a beaten dog beneath the hail,* cries. An unforgiving hand tortures my wrist, e isso me leva à morte.* *Canto LXXXI BY EZRA POUND *And it takes me to death

mi pasado escombros, fragmentos, delta que me hizo seguir hacia adelante… yo fluyó en más de una dirección  

Love bit me with its sweetest tooth They are three They are together Present in one The Black                    The White                                           The Red: The Moon for my concubine this slow dawn that lengthens with the rooster's crow this crescent moon whose sharp tip has begun to tear the dark love bit me with its sweetest tooth

Look at my mouth full of vitriol, and my throat full of poison hemlock look at the partridge dying in Rimbaud’s thyme desert look at the trees nerves tightened by the light. This is what I see in the smooth April hour, this is what I see in the chapel mirror.

NEW GUIDELINES FOR UNDERTOW TANKA REVIEW 1.      We will only be publishing 5 to 25 tanka, so send the very best. We're going to be very selective. 2.      Please don’t send traditional 31 syllable tanka, they will be rejected. 3.      We are looking for avant-garde, surreal, light-verse tanka poems. 4.      We are also open to haiku, the same amount will be selected for publication, we prefer modern haiku, nothing traditional. 5.      We are open to submissions year round, but will publish poems online three times a year starting May, 2016. Submission Windows From Oct. 15 to Dec. 15 for Jan. issue From Feb. 15 to Apr. 15 for May issue From Jun. 15 to Aug. 15 for Sep. issue ANNOUNCEMENT:  We have a new assistant editor, Rajan Garg  rajangarg.thapar@gmail.com Sergio Ortiz, editor  undertowtanka@gmail.com

Why is there so much life Maybe tonight is not a night, it must be a dreadful sun, or something else, anything. I don’t know.  There’s a lack of words, a lack of candor, a lack of poetry when blood cries and cries. There’s something tearing my skin, a blind fury runs through my veins, Cerberus of my soul. Let me go beyond your smile! I could be so happy tonight! There are lingering dreams, and so many books, and so many lights, and such few years.  Why not? Death is far away. It’s not looking at me. So much life, dear God. Why is there so much life?

I'm wiped out  by gales and rain  like an elegy  on an alley wall  ... yet I dare to love

Dark waters I swim in my waters wait for language to give me form think about the wind coming to caress my face a stranger to myself, I've walk all night in the rain I say:   you been given a silence full of forms and visions and I run like a heartbroken panther through the jungle

This compulsion to become an ageless angel, without a death in which to enjoy myself, without pity for my name or for my weeping bones. Who does not possess a fire, a death, a fear, something horrible, even when it has feathers even when it carries a smile Sinister delirium to love a shadow. A shadow does not die. My love only embraces what flows like lava from hell: a silent loggia, ghosts with sweet erections, priests made of froth, and above everything else angels beautiful angels like blades that rise at night to devastate hope.

Escombros El mundo está distorsionado y existen cerraduras por todas partes pero no llaves y existe la angustia pero no el llanto. ¿Qué hare conmigo mismo? Ocultarme en el lenguaje ahí no tengo miedo ahí está mi cara de ausente ahí está mi abrigo de cría de foca.

The devil that died in his blue jeans sings steeped in the drunkenness of the sun. There’s a blue jean in his song, a white horse, and a red heart tattooed on his chest. Despite the green fog on his lips and the cold gray in his eyes his voice corrodes the distance that lies between thirst and the hand looking for the glass. He sings.

Weeping at the many funerals of my birth 1. I’ve left my body next to the dawn and I've sung the sadness of what is born. 2. now then: who will stop digging their hands in search of the child’s tribute? the cold will pay. the wind will pay. the rain will pay. thunder will pay… 3. for a short-lived minute of life for a minute of viewing the brain for little flowers dancing like words in the mouth of a mute man 4. he’s afraid to undress in the paradise of his memory he’s ignorant of the fierce destiny of his visions 5. illumined memory, where the shadow of what I wait for roams. it’s a lie he will not return. it’s a lie he will return. 6. there’s a weak wind full of bent faces, cut-outs of things I want to love 7. now             at this innocent hour me and the one I was sit on the doorstep of my gaze 8. afraid of being two on my way to the mirro...

One night I told you   whoever doesn’t keep a secret will never have pity. It was raining, but you opened the window. The storm was blue in the forest. The red stain coming from the roses spread throughout the gardens and the world was the creation of another generation like the time we were in an abandoned house lighting an old fire.

When we lose a friend Everything I was with you was necessary, what I am with you on the right side of pain is necessary. To know, and later keep on living, to see how much deaf darkness besieged you, and later find the broken-hearted air you left for dead.

Ezdras Parra was a transgender Venezuelan poet, fiction writer, essayist, editor, literary and movie critic. She published:   Este suelo secreto (1995), obtaining the poetry prize;    II Bienal Mariano Picón Salas.  y Antigüedad del frío (2000).  In fiction writing she published:  El insurgente (1967), Por el mar de las Antillas (1968) y Juego limpio (1968). You who are never quenched nor know who you are nor exist for a certainty you who can be many when dreaming you are right or thinking you must conquer that nothingness Tú que jamás te sacias ni sabes quién eres ni existes para la certidumbre que puedes ser muchos soñando que estás en lo cierto o pensando que debes conquistar ese nada. the poem Que -That That this place does not leave me, this garden, this spread out sheet used to engross the horses circle the immobile panorama    its smell distributed over pastoral objects and w...