Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

The Shame and Fear We Sow It’s no longer Build the Wall or Lock Her Up , now it’s Shoot the Bitch. and Hang the Nigger. Outbursts, newsworthy metaphors, one more fire under Nowhere Bridge, a contemptible distraction to my support of The Water Protectors? I’m done listening to loudspeakers announce our descent into hell.  It’s a show of strength to be a powerful woman, a successful black man. Why run through the corridors of the West Wing cherry-picking slogans for a lynch mob?

In the Clear Age of Water The work of this day consists in carrying a bag laden with rain from here to there. Once done,  it's lift the bag  with our tired eyes, bury it in the lake of indifference where sad conversations rot. Let’s stamp life with graffiti. After all, we are just the so-and-so's, the whatshisname's, the Tom Dick or Harry's of life and rain is nothing more than corrected, repetitive poetry, a new pair of shoes wanting to be so joyful happiness tires and refuses to do any overtime.

This has been an incredible year for me.  After spending four years writing, editing, and publishing Tanka, I returned to longer poems.  Much to my surprise, I was nominated for a Best of the Net award for the poem, Requiem for Mercedes Sosa . I started working on my first full poetry collection, Elephant Graveyard, and it's almost finished. I tried my hand at writing political poems, and over the last two weeks 10 of those poems have been accepted for publication.  My life couldn't get any better.  I want to thank you all for reading my poems. Let's break a leg together. Sergio