Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

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 mirror: someone inside me eats and drinks me 9.

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 wheels torn to pieces because of its self-i