Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

A Poet's Epilogue The sudden flight of a startled butterfly reminds me of the serious impertinence of approaching matters without breaking with anguish, without forgetting the leaven of wounds. to be a stone in the depth of the stone I'd rather be a cross in the depth of the cross

About Profiles Sharpened in the light, like a sunrise doctoring himself in water, I look at how you lean on the magnet of your own shadow, as if you were a dream clock in the sweaty age of the planet. You are a fire cloud for the dolphin's plumage, the scar that travels from the nerve track of insomnia to the sulfur eyelid of an unclaimed god. I am the man, the throbbing eye in harmony with my uproar. Incurable tenderness suffocates me with the hands of oblivion because I speak alone to the crowds of your name. I am inside the small cavity of your dust with no possibility of a return, I look at you with the wise inconstancy of vinegar. I am the man, the dream, the eye.

Written on the Breath of a Crystal My faith is pregnant with black hens. I advance toward water urgently hitting the aftermath of time. I'm the feeble god that scratches the weight of terror. Here the afternoon is an ulcer but I like it because it’s in the latitude of suckling knives which are the skin of the dream in which you name me. Look at how this love of wires and equinoxes digs sea and sea, shovel and word. I have a caterpillar and my Quevedian faith, fertile and hairy as peace in a prairie. This faith snores when it talks about your absence, when it caresses the teenage udder of vinegar at the foot of bravura. Light creaks while I sing to the feline heart of your number, and my pencil trickles to the bad meat of knowing who I am, the open window to the muscle of a scream. Clot, kiss and faith, long-lived water in absent lightning. Here my terrible and polymorphous heart loves you in the simple milk of explo...

Coffee With Underhill 12 30 2016 just read one of my poems on CLOUDSOUND , Reasons to post a photo of a dead child from Aleppo...

Cooing the Man that is Singing He sings like the secret of stale rags. Opens unexpected seed pods. Grows eyelids to relieve our poverty. I break the dream that drew me to his voice and leave through a window to another jail where I fast in labyrinths stripped of leaves by music, disfigured by foam. I write so as not to lick the floor. I compose homelands  with oxidized tongues  (landscapes  with closed doors & mud ankles), islands of guitars without strings. He sings like skies feed on watches to make our days believe our right ear is a boy soaking his memory in The River of Docile Waters. He calls out my name, my silences of squeaking doors, my butterfly scars.

Narcissus’s Death Narcissus, Narcissus, the antlers of the murdered deer, fish, flames, flutes, are nibbled fingers. Lips are paths, sad flames, waves biting hips. Cold fish of the green, air in the mirrors without stretch marks, flocks of pigeons hidden in the dead throat, daughter of the arrow and the swan, seashell in the wave, uninterested cloud, foam hangs from the eyes, not offered marmoreal drop, a heron needs to wander! You hear fruit like screams in the snow, the secret in converted geraniums. Silk whiteness ascending spilled lips, open oblivion to the islands. Swords and eyelashes surrender to the dream, render the mirror on an impure seashore. Moist lips not on the seashell search for the straight thread. They are slaves of dry contours. The air bites the litmus that changes its sound into blond litmus of salt lime. If he goes through the mirror, the waters that stir the ears boil. If he leans on its edge or on his forehead the centurio...

Listen Without Prejudice It's December and it snows with the voice of George Michael. The apartment is a giant bed where the hard parts of love are covered. The mattress in my bedroom is gutted. There are nights overflowing in the ashtrays. He clasps his hands and a bird appears on the wall. Look at this elephant walk , she laughs, and repeats. He rolls another cigarette and changes channels. God is spoken. Death. Beneath the sheets there are attentive knees. He reads stories with his blood on fire. She falls asleep just before she cries. It's the voice of George Michael snowing. Clothes hang in the soul of the two. They look at each other as if they've just returned from a party. Time does not understand these things. For him they're all animals. They all have lessons to learn. On a Friday, there’s a crack in the air. The back door is wide open. George Michael lays silent in a drawer. That's how i...

I have eyes to see something of who I am tonight, and ears to listen too. I'm in my room with my dreams. Behind every shadow there are traces of me, on the chair, at my feet, in bed, watching. They take my name, and come out of the mirrors. It's been a while since we met up with each other. I'll give you my body. I’ll gather myself, open my eyes and sprinkle shadows with my darkness tonight. My heart on the bed sheet beating.

I am my body and my body is sad and tired. I'm going to sleep for a week, a month, a year, so be silent. That when I open my eyes children are grown and the universe smiles. I want to stop stepping on the bare feet of the cold. Let me have all the heat, the sheets, the blankets, papers and memories. Close all the doors so that my loneliness does not leave. I want to sleep for a month, a year, just sleep. And if I sleep talk, do not pay attention. I want you to pretend that I am buried until the day of the Resurrection. I want to sleep until next year, nothing more.

Dozens, the new Breath & Shadow Anthology is now online at Amazon. Breath & Shadow is a quarterly journal of disability culture and literature. A project of AbilityMaine, Breath & Shadow was the first online literary journal with a focus on disability. They are now open for both fiction and poetry submissions .

Goodbye 1.       Of Illusion You wrote: D  e  s  i  r  e on the tablet of my heart I walked for days and days dazzled      aromatized      and sad. 2.       Of Night In the loving night, I grieve. I pity his secret, my secret, I interrogate him in my blood for a long, long time. He doesn’t answer and does like my mother, who closes her eyes without listening to me. 3.       Of Goodbyes It's not to be said. It comes to our eyes, to our hands.  Trembles, resists. You say you'll wait―you wait― from then until … . And know goodbyes are useless and sad.

Of Goodbyes It's not to be said. It comes to our eyes, to our hands, trembles, resists. You say you'll wait―you wait― from then until … And know goodbyes are useless and sad.

Of the Night In the loving night I grieve. I pity her secret, my secret, I interrogate her in my blood for a long, long time. She doesn't answer and does like my mother, who closes her eyes without listening to me.

Of Illusion You wrote: D  e  s  i  r  e  in the table of my heart I walked  for days and days  crazy      aromatized      and sad

Wanting to cry,      almost crying. I bring my youth in my arms, the cloth of my blood on which my heart rests hopeful. Weak, convalescent, strange, deaf to my voice, marked by fright, I arrive to my youth like the leaves the wind spins around trees. I knew very few words to define the strange events of my ravages. Shadow and wound, lust, thirst and tears. I come to my youth and I spill myself on it like angry liquor, the blood of a beautiful horse, water on the thighs of a woman with tight thighs. My youth does not sustain me, I do not know what I'm saying and what I don't speak. I'm in my tenderness like sleep is in eyelids. If I walk, I do so like the blind learning from each step I take. Abandon me here. I'm glad. I expect something. I do not need more than a worthy dream, and incessant failure.

Our Father who Art in Heaven Let's talk about Prince Cancer, Lord of the Lungs, Male of the Prostate, having fun throwing darts to the smooth ovaries, and wilted vaginas, multitudinous Groins My father has the most beautiful cancer ganglion at the root of his neck, under the clavicle, tubercle of the good of God, light bulb of virtuous death. I send all the suns of the world to la chingada. The Lord Cancer, Lord Pendejo, is just an instrument in the dark hands of the sweet VIP's that make up life. In the four drawers of the wooden filing cabinet I keep dear names, clothes of familiar ghosts, words that wander around and my successive skins. I also keep the faces of beloved women, their loved and alone eyes, the chaste kiss of coitus. May good find the shadow of a heavenly tree.

A Hail Mary We buried you yesterday. Yesterday we buried you. We poured land over you yesterday. You were in the ground yesterday. You are surrounded by dirt since yesterday. Above and below and to the sides for your feet and on your head. We put you inside the earth, covered you with dirt yesterday. Yesterday we buried you. Generous Mother of the dead, mother earth, mother vagina of the cold, arms of weather, lap of wind, nest of night, mother of death, pick him up, strip him, take him, save him, finish him. As the children grow up, with all the dead, little by little, you finish. I've been watching you at night above the marble, inside your little house. One day with no eyes, no nose, no ears, another day without a throat, the skin on your forehead cracking, sinking, obscuring the wheat field of your reeds. All of you submerged in moisture and gases, making your waste, (your disorder, your soul) e...

I can make it rain, straighten twisted branches, raise the dead ... I say , let there be light , and the whole city’s godlike   

At midnight when August is about to end, I think about the leaves that incessantly fall from calendars. I believe I am the tree of the calendars. Every passing day, leaves me wondering: if the one who loses a father is an orphan, if a man who loses his wife is widower, what name do we give the loser? How to call an idler of time? And if I myself am time, how shall I call myself, if I lose myself? Day and night, not Monday or Tuesday, or August or September. Day and night are the measure of our duration. To open and close our eyes is to last. At this hour, every night, forever, I am the one who has lost the day. (Though I may feel that, like fruit rises through peach branches, the in the heart of these hours rises the dawn.)

Day House People and things enter the day house, acrid herbs, sleep deprived horses, pretensions with music, mannequins resembling girls. You and I enter. Dance enters, the sun, a life insurance agent and a policeman enter. We are going to sell ourselves, Mayhem.

Deciduous Magnolia I live in the emancipated pigeons of verbs that bellow or are silent, tattooing my spaces with the ancient wisdom that climbs up my tired back. I sneak into the senile mind of my illusions. But what if I get lost in the intricate abyss of the flesh's twilight? Who would pour the pearls of their anguish over me, or light the alter candle of my perennial memories? Whose Nannie would sleep with me on the dismay of my wandering soul, my bed of withered magnolias? If I shout into the wind, the leaves of anguish are shaken. Wind stirs the nests of disenchantment and anger. The storms of the past are subjected to the bluster of my echo, and the indelible present among  the branches of my tree. I shelter myself within carmine so as not to lose sight of the dawn.

Icarus 1. They melt in the sun, the wings that I stick on my memories. Some fly to me. Others  migrate forever. 2. Once the Penelope myth is broken, I’ll unleash the moon and set sail to build a new country, without marriages, without respite, where loneliness does not hurt. I'll exchanged the dilly-dally for a sea search. 3. Behind the wall the void as within me there is silence and between you and me skin that limit that sea 4. Head of woman and sex of fish. The heart beats in an old tin can. Shipwrecks leave from eyes that always die because of the mouth. But earth is your thing. You’ve always resisted swimming.

Little Red Cap On the other side of this huge forest the world awaits me. It's time to walk the path, although the trip may take several years of my life. I hear the old voice howl, the one that always manages to stop me: Beside this forest, all that awaits is the house where you die.

Exposed Today I am in a plot, where I suffer the rigors of winter. In summer, I burn in such a way that sparrows won’t nest in my hands. W hat hurts  the most is to lower  my head  and read  the plaque: Naked Woman , like so many others, I'm not even a name you remember.

Little Red Cap, time to walk the path ... all that awaits on this forest's further side is the house where I die

The Square Root of Love If I'm told you're on the other side of a bridge, strange as it may seem, please tell me, what is the bridge that separates your life from mine. In what black hour, what rainy city, what world without light, is that bridge and I will cross it. No matter the goal or the course, or the sun, which was light and whip of that day's journey. No matter the sweat, the thirst, the clumsy tired steps. The round trip. Even the landscape is not important, nor the orange earth, the green of alpines, the turquoise sea, the gray stones of borders and millennial defenses. When I go to love I have poppies on my lips and a spark of fire in my gaze. I wire and garner red roses. Red, the mirror of my darkened bedroom. When I return from love, withered, rejected, guilty, or simply absurd, I arrive pale, and very cold. Pupils rolled over the top of my eyes, white blood cells in the clouds,...

Carmen Carrera ¿Quién quiere jugar con mi día lluvioso? mi alteridad se pega a mi sin importar a dónde vaya : nunca prestes tu día lluvioso : cuántos cuerpos somos: cuántos seres: cuántos mundos: de dónde proviene este dolor: ¿dónde lo aprendimos :: hace años, cuando se me preguntó si mi amante pensaba como hombre no pude responder : la pregunta no tenía sentido : la respuesta está en el fondo del océano : en el mundo, efecto ondulación como vidrio viejo : El viento, lo persigo como si persiguiese conclusiones :: estoy en peligro de convertirme en un cuento de admonitorio : el número de muros que me rodean es variable : no he podido convertirme en un santo de yeso : no he logrado convertirme en una mujer : mi bien-ganado silencio viene de más allá del cuerpo : la vida es sopa, no sándwich : la piel se convierte en dolor de viejas herida : hollamos el mundo esta mezcla y desenfoque : cuando me muera me convertiré en un mapa : es bastante fácil cambiar es...

Who Cares He threw himself on me, wanting to drown who I am, he was sick. I fought, broke his lip. Kicked his pride. I dredged up large pieces  of hard wood, tied them together, hammered & hammered. Dug a hole as deep as I could. Buried the logs upside down, thrashed him violently demanding he recite: I'm human, with nothin' of nothin' but sorrow. And the swagger who refutes my claim better take it easy, or ... Who cares. There are no deserts or Mayan sinkholes here, only human twilight.

Que importa Se me tiro encima, quería ahogarme. Estaba enfermo. Luche, le partí el labio, pateé su orgullo.  Busque dos pedazos de madera dura, los cosí, clavé y clavé. Hice un hoyo, lo más profundo que pude. Enterré el madero al revés y a latigazo limpio lo obligue recitar: yo soy humano sin na' de na,’ pero sin quebranto. Y al echón que me desmienta que ande muy derecho … Que importa. Aquí no hay desiertos de cenotes mayas solo crepúsculos humanos.