Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

The first man to tour my body had magician lips flavored like wild fruit. He burned my hair with five oils and incantations that sounded like bells. His potions burned all night under my bed. The next day the albino child born before the harvest tossed them into the river with his eyes closed.  He didn’t want to see the sudden flight of vultures. In the meantime, my mother told me what White Fang didn’t know about the snow, and the memory of the sea became a mirage under the bedsheet.

Ghost I love the tenuous lines of your sex, your cluster  of forgotten aromas your ghost heart and the steps that nobody forces you to take

Senior Housing Time is bored with half of the almanac —it rains, it always rains— a remnant of sanity stored in the second to last suburb where I do my jogging. The other half of the days in the almanac are drowsy sleepy days where solemn statues come down from their pedestals to play canasta.

from Stories for a New Day Some poets took to the streets, invaded the parks and deceived doves with verses. They regrouped on city corners in silence, melancholia took over their hands, the profile of their mouths. But you’d never confuse them with the window display of a bookstore. A store from which the heart escapes as soon as it can. They’d faint for a little light, for the golden vein of granite, the marquee on which doves took refuge tired of so much ruse. They stayed on the streets until the new day became a roller shutter.

¿Sera así la vida? A mí nunca me han prometido nada. No hay nada roto en mí, ni caminó por la lagrima del día buscando refugio. No se me olvida reír cuando estoy solo y lloró como un loco por la hambruna por el color crepuscular de la tarde por el amargo perfume del suicida.

The most difficult thing for a photograph After spring there are no summers. The night watchman is a voyeuristic old owl on the roof of a cathedral. The most difficult thing for a photograph is to rub without setting on fire the beheaded hours of a lifetime. The rest is always simple.