Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Bare Embers You, naked stretch out on my skin like a hill bitten by the sun. The fruit slips, grows, swells, it's burning. At six in the mirror you enter me as the most expectant guest, simple as a river of light. You cover me with your man skin. You, the tongue that runs through my veins to silence me. You take my eyes off painfully and give me two other arms with which to weigh your inner thighs. Your mouth drizzles on my back. You scratch my back and write your name. You talk to me with your bones. My moan, the longest sound you’ll hear tonight. When we are alone, still naked, when everything is over, it hails. The air has just discovered us.

When the World Reached a Different Age I pin my astonishment to his lips. His black elephant eyes bleeding. I save the light from under his hair. Sun. Shadows in his eyelashes bandy like grapes of a winepress. I rebuilt the fever, and sunset flutters in his socks. Him, medium in years, thirty-seven. I tumble off his neck when under the briefs two fragile ships begin to submit.

From the Window There goes the drunken moon on its way home. I drink the night like a body fallen to the cement of solitude. The rats of the garden  warm, shelter, and comfort me with chewed kisses. Dawn smells like the bodies consumed by the waters that fell into the landfills of who I use to be. I do not know if I am or not who wants the new night the New Year this age-old time to end, and every yesterday turned into a song warming my night.

Otra tal vez la última mentira que escondo bajo la luna blanca de mis uñas. Otro, tal vez el único recuerdo perdido del eco sigiloso en voz de hombre seducido. Otra, no está vida, camina mareada  en el desvelo  de tu piel.

Desprecio No dormiré. Me acostaré inmóvil hasta que llegue el alba. Mis pupilas esconden todo lo desechado. Tiraré mis piernas al mar para ver cómo me hundo. Cuando abra mis ojos comprenderás que estoy tuerto de sol y luna. Así soy yo de sangre fría. He pervertido hasta tu desprecio.

Tegucigalpa Llegué por aire desde el gris de la memoria, a los pinos más hermosos que continúan pintando la sal de mis perladas nubes isleñas. No dejo de inhalar tus fragancias, Catedral donde cante villancicos en francés. Brisas soplan alegres, acogidas a manos inocentes. Despunta el revuelo de las aves marcando el alba y el crepúsculo con su trova. Allí aprendí que el sol cristaliza la memoria. Luna bruja, hechizaste mi vasija rota.

The Portrait Night winds coil the sunless hours as daylight wiggles out of darkness. A kingly fez, curved by a green turban, spun round His hallowed head. Humble, my beloved, the painter could not gaze into His face. He took his hands, so blessed, and smoothed the crests on His garb. The painter had no choice, he bowed in shame.

Nota sobre la mesa - imitando a William Carlos Williams Quiero que lo sepas que los mangos que dejaste sobre la mesa estaban ricos. Dulces, bien maduritos. Gracias por el café. No olvides que Enrique y los muchachos vienen esta noche a tomarse unas cervezas. Ellos y sus esposas. Ángela llamo, Miguel salió bien en todos los exámenes. Ya no hay que preocuparse por el cáncer.

Eco de Lluvia Nadie te comprende como yo. Escucho en el silencio de tus manos aire prendido en llamas navegando dentro de mi llanto. La estrechez de mis paredes se derrumba de solo mirar tus piernas. Bailamos esta pieza con la muerte sin recordar que nos prometió la vida. Reclamo dos suspiros y una guirnalda.  Si tu amante no regresa ahogaremos nuestras penas juntos, cual piedras mojadas, girando sobre el eco conturbado de la lluvia.

Four Saints and a Demon Chewing Tabacco These are the troubled times of tortured folksongs, before the last war ended and I am no reincarnation of Dylan Thomas. This is when I and I get married, age together, die in Montevideo, before the last war ended and rediscover the secret of life reincarnated as Allen Ginsberg at the wake for Sal Paradise, tobacco and Sunday paper in hand, before the last war ended. I consider implants, and reincarnate as Gertrude Stein.

Poems up at Rocky Mountain Revival   (poem is in print) and The Wild Word

Undertow Tanka ReviewIssue 11 is open for submissions until April 20th Send up to 10 of your very best Tanka and/or Haiku to undertowtanka@gmail.com . We tend to favor surreal and modern tanka and haiku.  Surreal art is also accepted.

Shady Checo Man fuiste crueldad armonizada, apego, deseo de ir hacia ti in-          cumplido.

. Angel of Shiraz At 7:30pm, Saturday, 23 October, 1982 four armed guards pushed their way into Mona’s house. Graceful emerald with crystal pearl eyes wrapping the embrace of children to your heart. Chasing hammer         cup bur-singing seventeen sonnets of love, so young it pains the curb. Three tic-tacs feel like years searching the drawers. Closet knobs gripping the guards’ hands as joyous temperatures rise to their ruby peek. “Loop lady, don’t say the emerald is only seventeen. Children follow what she speaks like roses marching straight into Zion.” I would die for You. “Furkhundih, azizum joon mama. Don’t worry. They are my brothers too.” There are no good-byes in that blindfolded prison of Sepah. Leaf Mothers rush from their heavenly chambers in anguish to safeguard the Emerald of Shiraz. Insults, interrogations, Bastinado. The Angel begs for the noose to le...

Thursday Gypsy Linda prepared for bed confident she could not receive bad news. It was Thursday, bad news was announced in dreams on Fridays. Linda walked over to the drawer and took out the tied chicken legs, and rubbed the tattoos, stricken by the taunt of sailors, on the right side of her neck for good luck. Gypsies don’t read each other’s palms. They understand war casualties, letter writing the fog, black and white images that make you forget the wind. She refused to think about the fuzz on his back, how it spread to his buttocks. The maid walked in the bedroom with the Acacia oil. She was as thin as phyllo dough with a huge belly. The señora wants me to brush her hair? ― Wait. Please, wash your hands. My husband will be home in the morning, I want my hair noticeable. Look at you, skinnier by the day. Are you certain about not telling me who the father is? Señora, he is an important man. He won’t give a shit abou...

Después de cruzar la calle loco con tu piel pero luego       luego te pienso más mío más tiempo más silencio                manantial de planetas cósmicos prestándole luz a mi sendero salpicando de alegrías (mis estrellas rotas o tal vez las nuestras) y aquí estamos tu sentado en mi lengua de roca yo recostado sobre tu pensamiento de lluvia comenzando a conocernos

Outfits I stopped pushing salvation on inner city streets after his funeral. Maples lining the road home took me to the kimono and the baby, anniversary gifts from my son. Ruben changed clothes as soon as we got home from Sunday school: mariachi, prime ballerina. It was difficult to keep a straight face in the middle of an argument with a little cross-dresser playing in front of you. The beginning of autumn, that’s when he started collecting the feathers. Ruben, lifeless. We found the first one outside a Mud Wrestling Bar & Grill. It had the Lord’s Prayer written on the barbs. Soon, they were coming from all over the world. He loved to collect them. Close, my son was very close to his boy. Closer than the rope he used to hang himself. He couldn’t take the impact of Ruben’s passing. I need to look in the mirror, put on the kimono, cover my arms with the red yellow leaves of the sash, to hide my teeth marks.

The Martyrdom One hundred and thirty-six mirrors whirled around him like a hurricane, the reflection of his heart on The Hand that shapes existence. Mountains gathered around a line of blood. Radioactive chain reaction dripped from his open wounds, and I despaired. He left me dressed in shades of purple, aflame, lowered back into my coffin.

The Smell of Sulfur The odor of sulfur is as strong as the company brought to the podium of Titans. Gaia and Ouranos spit angry epithets at each other in the armory on Boulevard where the effigy hides bottles of gin. On television, the rib-tickling, righteous Titan gets an opportunity to explain the notion of drowning in the desert to the nation recently targeted by white supremacist. The program furthers The Graven image’s intent to build a wall.  Is it to keep some out, or trap everyone in? Women tip-toeing north through the desert leave an uncomfortable trail of blood too long to ignore, rivers of pearls buried under the roots of ancient saguaros on Cristero soil. Words pronounced by the Shebang Smoking Idol don't mean a thing to thirty million butterflies. They were there first.

Postcards Willie, when Eloy showed me the wedding rings I broke out in tears. I was so innocent, didn’t even know why I followed you to Bolivia. Yo fui la más callada de todas las que hicieron el viaje hasta tu Puerto. 2. Write me a poem that will bring me back to life, papi. Be my distraction, or I am going to find a tall, blue eyed angel with baker hands and lips like James Dean. A dormir se van ahora mis lagrimas por donde tu cruzaste mi verso. 3. Negro, I’ve murdered myself so many times the effort is starting to hurt. Someone stole my poetry. They wanted to teach me to write on paper. As if everything I do isn’t already written in blood. I begged mama to help me die, but she refused, had to slash my own wrist. Todos los ojos del viento ya me lloraron por muerta. 4. Do you think ghosts can ask for asylum in Cuba? Willie, take my clothes off. Look at my scars without crying and tell me I’m beautiful. Don’t li...

Intimate You saddle the other me, the one you empty each disappearing dawn, the bulldogger with a bitten lip. I am crowned with psychedelic corollas, dreams beyond dreams. I learn to forget by forgetting. There is nothing left of my ecstasies, or the color of my obsessions, not even the seize of your mouth on my words.

A Reverie of Horror He finds the hallway leading to death's wrinkled Greta Garbo legs. Children standing by their mother's broken mirror have their own boleros to remember. Spiders weave the stench of his sour jungle, a vile outbreak of colloquial monsters. My father sings a duo with my father.

On the Day of the Dead On the day of the dead, Pablo put on his pants one mummified foot at a time. It wasn't his fault, rain was the true culprit. Clouds followed his feet for years, poured whenever he tried to cut bread in the City of Glass. His soles cracked, sprouting roots. Julia entertained on her balcony, levitating intimate secrets. People on 42nd Street attributed her faculties to a Santero visiting her family on the day she was born. She stood tall and elegant like the mountains to the south of Black Island, Pablo's home. Her face had traces of unforgettable pain. They married. Julia, carried down the aisle by two old lovers, found the last bottle of rum hidden in the trash before the wedding. She bled life into a gutter, no one recited her verses. No one knew she was Ambassador to the Island of Poetry. Pablo was one mummified foot at a time closer to banging pots and starvation. Medicine denied, orders from th...

Collective Madness Around the house the flakes fly faster, And all the berries now are gone' Birds At Winter , Thomas Harding Overexposed driftwood is what we are. Bewitched by the light, pretty little cento, eclipse enchanted with rainbows. Our childhood memories linger like pastoral triolets rolling about meadows. Luck has nothing to do with interpreting the veils with which we choose to cover our faces. Enlightenment happens after we fall. Madness comes in the form of eyes appended to blood dripping rocks when our demons fail to cross the river. Never is where we usually drink tea and endlessly suck on lemons. Smiles are inevitable when we spar with strangers. 

Silent A chorus of genuflections filtered through the kitchen ventilator and knelt beside my bed around midnight. I knew Georgina was dead. My rocking chair peeled its mahogany finish in her honor. There were loud knocks at the door. Neighbors   packing axioms, guns, crucifixes, shovels. “Hi, we were wondering about the odor?” It’s not coming from here, I’m not dead yet. Occasionally, I see apparitions of myself standing by the window, behind the shower curtain, but I still go fly fishing. Mother came to me in a dream last night, gave me the password to a house where boas reincarnate into possessed lizards catching mosquitoes on maracas. She said, everything spoken becomes water, blends. I am going to stop talking for seven years, but first let me repeat this a few more times Harmonizing the sacred          Harmonizing the sacred        ...

My first sin was to ridicule a mocker, and hate him with clear adoration. For in so doing, I became the beggar and he the overlord of my will. Now I know the devil, I know Rome in its last hour.

Gray and Dead I’ve thought about dinner parties, the theatre: things no longer in the budget. Sex. Doctors. I’ve thought about cohesion, Clairol, Herbal Essence and Eyeliner. I’ve thought about outreach groups, raisins, peaches, and kiwis. Still-life paintings in my city. I’ve thought about The Voice, and meals on wheels. About slam competitions, and another twenty years of less, and less of a line that does not disappear on its own. I’ve thought about mangrove crabs living in mud holes, pushed back into the closet.

Toilets I’m in love with a homeless man. Now listen, we’ve got a lot in common, H.U.D., lawyers, politicians. We have heated discussions about the face fucking activity in the toilets at the Whitehouse but when he stares at my dick and licks my nipples it’s just me and him.

Para Recuperar la Desnudez Mi pobre pueblo, decenas de zapos y reptiles políticos invadieron sus aguas. Ahora todos nos odiamos. Virus de ranas con putos zapatos de cocodrilos. Me huele a brea, y a trabajo forzoso. Me huele a despedida, y a año electoral, a mulato a punto de perder su reelección. Me huele a rezo, a incienso y a San Antonio de Padua naufragando.

Two poems up at Fourth &Sycamore

The End of Night I exist to be conquered. I, set against all other I’s, am a stillborn poem taken out of my mother’s womb. Once I was immortal, condemned to endless mornings, empty of the knowledge of manmade rituals. Until out of my mouth that knows, came the shape I was seeking. Now I want to be a waterfall of hummingbirds covering our bodies. Sometimes I read you under another twilight. In that half-light your voice is different. When you open your wings you do not look like yourself but I know that it’s you.

The Alembic Soft humid hair trickles from his torso to his belly button. I moisten my lips. When the fruit ripens, he places it in containers fashioned in scented Spanish Oak and moss. But to me Jerez is not what gives him the fragrance of Montilla. It only forces me to savor the memory of his abdomen.