Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Immense Magnolia Petal I thought death was one more way of being and not the other side of stones I looked for the smile of my childhood under your face and found your mother’s mourning glove your words fell like marbles down the stairs of silence to the foot of my soul mummified by your gesture earth opened to swallowed dawn birds and a tide of fear covered you death settled in the pores of day and I, undaunted watchman, witnessed the disintegration of the universe

Black on Black This is the Panamanian nymph the one printing her shape on my retina for a second she leaves an homeopathic drop of luck in the waters of my trembling body

Dry Portrait of Frida Kahlo From eyebrow to jail bars I am crowned with a rail of thorns this vertebral column hell of skulls agonizes me                     this severed placenta slavery feeds me             the orphanage pushing my gut aborts and aborts me I am a motherless ghost my dry udders drip rusted curds punishment for a castrated uterus Oh how I limp in my portraits Every sterile night, I un-nurse the fetuses in the bones of my bed and my eyes bleed drops of mirrors that speak to me and the twisted breath of daily tragedy nails me and I am hidden in my Nana, I breastfeed shadows with the same loneliness that night pours inside me and I paint myself without looking

Meeting Up with Lorca Birds fled from me at four in the afternoon. Serene birds, slow birds fled from me leaving their wings in my breast at four in the afternoon.

Stain Glass Windows You undress as if you were opening a chest full of jewels the best thing is your shine little hues of a black cat torsos broaden on the white bed sheet we do not do circus acts something takes me to your bitter butterflies and I stay there I clean wing to wing the wind adheres to this victory I take off my clothes give you the gesture bestowed on all fruits we are not beast we are stain-glass windows and we let the light pass through

Bed and Mesa They were not paper boats on the bed, only books, stars above the sky of the —inverted— mattress 

Chess Because then I’m just a little boy, birth and death have always been the dance, the true meaning of the game is in life, the true meaning of life is in the game.

Enunciations In the swift days of my life, the feet of the beast described by Daniel in his Book, 500 years and they still failed to set iron and miry clay, but the sword with which they imposed the siege had plunged the homeland into misery. Not much ever happened, Amen! to business, the beautiful alliterations of brokerages. 170, 000 beheaded. Life in the country was commendable, anyone could carry a flag and brandish stories. Getting into the economic brutality of kings and Orthodox Jews took into account a healthy economy, at least that’s what the papers said, so life in the pipe-dream-country started at 6am with breakfast, take the kids to school, then keep your buttocks behind a desk, behind a wrench, behind a broom, behind oneself, to honor the hours that would allow the boss to have his piña colada anywhere he had a world. Now the auxiliary realm of greed broadcasted live strange numerals  as if panic co...

Syria 2016 Today I continue to be sad as if I had died  looking  at the fungi of depleted uranium spreading through the bodies of children while I listen to Tartini as if he were a memorable man. Today I continue to be barefoot on my city’s streets without friends, and no one to wait for me at home. My loneliness is so deep that I sit down and listen to birdsong, and no longer want to be here. There’s nothing removing my annoyance, nothing allowing me to relive my love.

Trump Midas There was no water in Jersey City but Trump Midas in his Olympic pool was swimming as if the water in the city was all his. After counting the day’s earnings he was happy he had made a million more, and his businesses made more poor. Politicians and businessmen praise me , was what he’d say. Great, I am a winner, a total winner, an unequivocal winner

Medusa Medusa didn’t die in the pantheon of mythologies, she lives inside us  with her ravenous eyes. She has no gender or specific place, she keeps growing in our body like a terminal illness. To find her all we need to do is stare into the face of cancer, stare at the snakes that fall from our hair, at the man who breaks like a child.

Poems to my Double Years pass from me to you like crow’s feet my tears don’t stop rolling down your cheeks a breath separates the mirror from the reflection I opened his eyes saw my darkness live is there a boatman to can carry light from end to end? beyond me you don’t exist to exhale the ghost is a task for the living to drink memories through the eyes is the purpose of the dead split the bread of illusion in my mouth

Wounded Babylon I love your confusion the scrambled birds of your tongue your simultaneous words your Babel    your Delphi Sibyl of enemy voice I love it when you say night and it is dawn when you say I am and it is the wind I love your wounded Babylon the misunderstanding that forces you to make up a fable

Night in the City Do you refuse to accept that love was here imagining birds, unearthing ruins? Rain, rain and music are black in these streets crowded with crucified people that walk, the dying that work, unburied corpses clapping and smiling. Perhaps there still remains in this space of shattered dreams, mashed dreams, another crazy dreamer repeating: light is close, light is near . But, as in other times, only a cold and empty silence answers, a festive, blind hustle and bustle of these dead remains, the perfectly dead               dead. Only a sour, metallic drop of night can be heard, an immense black sheet of iron.

Ramona Part 3 but it grieves my heart, love to see you tryin’ to be a part of a world that just don’t exist Bob Dylan, To Ramona I’ll call til the doors of your fortified city, with inviolate statutes, adopt me as inhabitant of the life that unfolds within you identical to the rain of silence over your head I’ll permeate you gradually until I am smoke in your voice.

Ramona, part 2 though breathlike, get deathlike at times and there's no use in tryin' to deal with the dyin' though I cannot explain that in lines. Bob Dylan, To Ramona I am what you are I look through your eyes I walk because of your feet I get up no weight on you and I immerse myself in your waters. I know the specific meaning you have given your view of the universe. I am your meridian laughter, your arms floating in the air, your fingers de-kernelling a time composed of            dawn to night. I am your       without a body. Your story is the same as mine, from childhood I feel through your spores with absent eyes.

Ramona Ramona, come closer Shut softly your watery eyes The pangs of your sadness Will pass as your senses will rise Bob Dylan, To Ramona When night ashes spill on your pupils, the same as in a defenseless city, knotting your silence, you don’t tell me anything. Moss also grows on my lips. We contemplate each other as if our bodies didn’t exist. I come to your room with a confusion of mouth and a capsizing of manhood. I bring my daily offering, a mound of absence cast in copper memories.

This is a Dream Do not fear hit men coming with air guns under the rain. Do not ache for victims at the corner waiting. Do not worry, the gods of human sacrifice are dead. This is a dream. When you wake, there will be no assassins, only the rain falling on an empty street.

Little Oedipus It was early morning, the mother woke up the youngster and between supplications, and prayers to the god of earthquakes. She dug her fingers into the sockets of the little boys eyes then opened the door of the squalid household and cast the little Oedipus, with blood dripping down his face, to grope about the paths of earth announcing the end of the world.

For Insomnia night… in the window your body rains a butterfly spins and spins in that squall night knows no roads… the sparrow doesn’t recognize where it has fallen when nobody sees him man walks out on man your body and mine a sweltering ghost among the doors that open and close one remains open, the one painted blue by the wind

At someone’s feet I will walk with you in the sun and wind rummage in life’s dumpsters I lie at your feet like a shadow like a dog

Yesterdays my yesterdays fit in one hand I carry my profits in a bag full of holes when I move I win one place and lose another presence and absence are the same all my yesterday’s fit in one empty hand

Wetback of eternity I am                undocumented worker of eternity, an illegal                   crossing the border of a dream. My passport of existence has expired. Without proper documentation                my bones are worthless. I travel            night in a crowded truck without headlights. I sleep in the backrooms of the law. My American dream became the hell of my exile. He has come out of shadows , they point at me and say, when I appear from the toilets of my job. It doesn’t matter.  I celebrate like a wetback the passage of wind in desert altars and contemplate infinity in the place where the twin towers stood.

Ways of having an angel An angel is the spiritual bodyguard that protects us from material, supernatural enemies, and those we engender with images, words and dreams: he fights, at midnight, in the middle of the street, and in bed, against odious figures, figures that we tend to love. People say: an angel  passed through here , when there is silence among them, united in one body: while our angels wait they look at each other in the mirror or stare out the window at the long yellow afternoon. Lovers say: an angel just walked by, as if the presence of the desired one had the body of absence, as if it could perceive what had already happened, and they knew they loved when they no longer love. An angel passed , says the angel, without seeing his own shadow in time, without perceiving the longing his words left within, men of flesh and blood, looking from the other side of the window, drunk with love and death. She’s...

A Time for Angels And God said, let there be angel. And the angel was made out of words. And man said, let there be angel made of inner words. Let the angel be in the likeness of my spirit. And God said, let every man have an angel in his likeness up in heaven and when he dies may they become one. And man said, if God does not create the angel, the imagination must create it, because if there’s a gap between God and man there can be no communication. There must be an intermediary spirit between sky and earth, between the invisible and the visible, between the spiritual and the material. God said, man arrived late for the time of gods and early for the time of beings, the angel came on time for both. Man said, the angel is the body joining gods and beings, it is the bridge that joins the stare to what is looked at. God said, so men and angels understand each other, angels on earth must speak the languages of men, and when men ...