Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

With You Because the soul does not live in things but in the bold action of deciphering them, I love the light that encourages my senses. A thousand times I've wanted to find out  who I am. After so many names, so much crossing of my own compass, I could hug sand for several centuries. Watch silence pass and embrace it as well. The truth is not in me every second. It is a fleeting attempt to catch the ungraspable. Truth is not in anyone, it's further from a king than from beggar. If someone thinks about pursuing it, do not forget this: fire has always  been a harbinger of decline, the precursor intensity of oblivion. When my eyes return to my origin, I ask for one last gift.   Nothing else. Write all my words in my grave, what I said a thousand times and what I would have liked  to have said at least once. Keep my words nearby, the ones that I used to love, the ones that I learned along the way. ...

Sergio Ortiz ACENTOS REVIEW  2009   The Shop This afternoon it will rain. I will wrap my fingers around your neck and submerge you in water. You will kick and wiggle out of desperation, you won't let go of life voluntarily. You're driven to wake-up and turn-on the coffee percolator in your remodeled kitchen. Driven to fill the pantry and read the New York Times. You must find out if Justice Sotomayor was confirmed, if swine flu mutated in North Korea. Driven to give your wife multiple orgasms, you’re afraid she'll copulate with another man, a neighbor, maybe the woman she talks to about how little you please her. I will tighten my fingers around your neck and cut off the air. Your eyes will bulge, handcuffs will tear the flesh around your wrists. You'll be seconds from pissing in your pants. This afternoon you'll give in to me for as long as I want, wherever I want, here, in the Calvin Klein mannequin display.         Lost There is no simple, muddled way of...

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Another Birthday Approaching   There were so many unresolved  hurtful words said in haste  on your way out, mother. Pain that never thawed,  unsympathetic eyes  with blinkers and no  apparent regret.  I could say I forgave  but the blood  on my living room floor  could call me hypocrite  and liar, a blood version  of Dali's, The Face Of War.

  Eighteen and Nowhere to Go but the Noose You raped me         Two months later  you raped me again                      You forced me  to give-it-up for a grade          in college                     another    violation Your doctors ravished          my kindness and ate it         so did  your lawyers                and Housing      Assaulted  I walk aimless            through hellfire

https://synchchaos.com/poetry-from-sergio-a-ortiz/

ESTEVíN Y LA BESTIA Escrito por, Phd. Rafael Monserrate. El siguiente es un relato ficticio inspirado en hechos reales en colaboración con el poeta Sergio A. Ortiz Rivera.  La primera vez que Estevín vio la bestia tenía 4.5 años de edad. Tuvo un sueño confuso donde una bestia rugiente se acercaba a él. Despertó llorando asustado. Sus padres lo castigaron por haber despertado “innecesariamente” a su hermanastro menor y a ellos. Año y medio después, a los 6 años de edad, Esteban, alías Estevín, mide 1.09 metros de estatura, es de constitución delgada, piel morena clara, y el miedo sigue siendo parte de su vida. Estevín, además del miedo siente coraje. Su cuerpo  tiembla mientras intenta acomodarse en el suelo del armario donde fue encerrado a oscuras, amarrado de cuerpo y manos, por sus padres. El no lograr comprender del todo el porqué fue encerrado, amarrado, a oscuras en el armario genera frustración que se transforma en coraje. El miedo y la incertidumbre duermen...

This gay/political poem of mine was recently published by Spillwords, an online lit journal.  https://spillwords.com/the-wolf/ The wolf "I know there’s something better down the road."   Praise Song for the Day, Elizabeth Alexander I saw a wolf pass by.  His eyes left tracks all over my body. Stealthy and hungry he walked  through the city confident  about the future. Now that the shutters  are down, a wolf waits  to devour my ballot. When I try  to quiet my fear he jumps  at my words, a memory rips out  a howl that devours us both.

Orgullosa de ser trans Orgullosa de ser trans  Me uní a los montoneros después de divisar a marines  estadounidenses entrenar tropas  argentinas y chilenas en el arte  de la tortura y el genocidio  allá en el desierto de Judas. Los montoneros me apodaron  Malena de los callejones tristes.  La transición nunca fue una opción. No me malinterpreten, es que el viaje  de una mariposa es corto,  y lleno de peligros silenciosos.  El amor es traicionero en tiempos de guerra, así que nunca me casé.   El sexo de espía fue la vara a al cual me aferré,  mi aullido, mi munición. Después del encarcelamiento  de la esposa de Perón huí  al Medio Oriente. Interpreté  mis canciones en cabarets gay secretos  bajo el seudónimo de Almudena Angra donde me destapaba levemente los pechos y faldas mientras  cantaba tangos. Todavía circulan películas  de mi llamado a la Yihad por todo el mundo;"Argentina Nu...

Poets are the magicians of the unseen,  snake charmers of winds and thoughts,  wolves echoing the lamentations  of a broken heart.  Through their blind retrospect we taste crimes of the living  and the dead, smell the pollination  of a rose upon the diamond mount  of the soul,  clutch a stormy Alaskan  winter of the heart, free the taste buds  of paellas of disgrace, a father  who has left his first born helplessly asleep on the highest peak of the Himalayas

He’s NOT my President the wind is what I believe in, the One that moves around each form Veteran , by Fanny Howe I eat breakfast, watch t.v.  while I think about the nurses  Uand doctors in protective gear on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The wind reaches into the pockets of the night, sails through hospital corridors I don't recognize, deserted emergency rooms I had never seen where promises are paid  with more promises, and lies  are the substitutes  for more lies. My keys draw lines of fire  on the counter in the bar  near my house. They're building nationalist utopias, banishing unmasked,  unprotected, racist women protesting  in front of the White House. My job is my father’s old job, I write the newspaper headings, pour more salt on my tequila,  stare at each individual crystal, frighten away old precipice birds.

Desiring my boyfriend's body I had a boyfriend once, who believed in decomposition. He told me this as we swerved in his truck, careening the back roads of Lajas, Puerto Rico, finishing the work of some come-before travelers, flattening each roadkill carcass into unrecognizability. "Less for the highway crew," he’d say. egrets, known as the Great White Heron gather at the maw of the stream feeding into the lake too many to count. I thought they were solitary birds. But there they were eating the ticks of the pasturing cows. My boyfriend wouldn’t have sex with me. He didn’t believe in latex, artificial hormones, the calendar or his own control. I can’t, he said, risk bringing a life into this world I’m not prepared to care for. And I’d plead, cajole, argue for his skin and my skin, sheathed in multiple prophylactics, only succeeding occasionally. at certain times, lake flies clot the air, thrumming, their mouthless bodies my body hungers, vibrates with no disce...

I am as Lonely as Falling Drops of Rain  I am the poem that began at dawn. The sand of Abyssinia sprouted from my eyes today  and all the perfume in Paris  originated from my lips. I saw the moon rise on a river  in the Far East, saw her drown completely drunk on midnight lovers' lips. Bowing my head I knelt  to beg for God's wrath  shaken by the sad eyes  of alpacas, opened two hundred and eighty-five doors looking for the letter where you say, we learn to challenge darkness  with more darkness. You said, I am that poem that began at dawn.   I added, and never ended . You laughed. I responded, you'll need more than that to get me to walk to your bed.  Then we both laughed.  I think you'll be convinced  before we finish the wine. Who knows, let's give it a try.  I smiled and I said, I'm in . You ordered Siri to turn on the music and I got up from my chair edged closer until I reached out  put my arms around you and da...

Songs of Anguish  Clouds approach my eyes, silent spaces, intense blues and greys, buried simulations of a life preparing for the day of departure.  No one leaves dressed in diamonds.  No prince parts clothed in gold nuggets. No one flies covered in sapphires. Abandoned we return as dust or salt. Nameless we embody other parrots, worship other snakes  in the skins  of faceless saints.