Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

The key you have not lost is there between those spaces, not by or in, but flanked between here and there, living like a fugitive on your skin. It is a prelude to our memoirs, the text of a poem fused with nectarines, an exploration through Copper Canyon, visions of Haiti’s angels licking my ears, a hypnotic dance on sands matching the colors that mesh upon your hips, an experiment we refuse to put down, an invitation to cross the doorway of the home I no longer occupy. The key you have not lost is not the manual for a digital camera, or calendar entries for next month’s readings. It is not the Popular Mechanics article you wrote to put food on our table, or a classified ad on craigslist. It wants to be the bungee jump into the pangs of a deer in heat, the obituary of bolted doorknobs, or a listing for all the vacant walls on which we'll scribble our graffiti. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, April 2010

Tristan Breathe, let the lepers out.   Drift to the edge of my cloud and speak. Find the fire, burn my locust storm.   Persuade me to sleep in a matrix full of sails that drift disoriented yet attuned to the wind.   Touch me like an innocent man willing to let go of his campfire in the middle of this circular stage, the classroom where pupils are attentive to the magician’s tricks.   Dream and let that dream flood my vigilant ghosts, impostors of windflowers and silk. ©   Sergio A. Ortiz, 

this is my story and place of birth a wheelchair a body wrapped in a sack a childhood jerked around by an unwarranted curse and a stubborn useless desire for a pair of tailored hands climbing up my thighs  ©  Sergio A.  Ortiz, publisher:  Flutter Press, 2009

Someone once said I wasn’t born for the thick prose of hard labor.  I gather they felt I was pure and agile like the sea breeze, a wave of fragrance in the petal of a rose breaching the discipline of time.  But, aren’t we all? ©  Sergio A. Ortiz , publisher:  Flutter Press, 2009

I am tired of this monotonous, sedentary afternoon in which long-faced gentlemen vociferate their ignorance of the Afghan war. Dazed afternoon under the scorching sun watching a mangy dog get up off the floor unconcerned with the child who just got shot by its side. I want to emigrate, find nights sharpened by the owl’s eye, nights full of bandits and consumptive whores. I want to crumple up like the wasp’s neurosis on my bed. Oh, outlet city, how is it that my verses are born in this ferocious village? What empty lines did I mistake for an oasis, dark-dense people full of shady passions? ©  Sergio A. Ortiz.  Publisher:  Flutter Press, 2009.

The Sentinel I am not burying him, not until I’ve recovered every remembrance. Classified them by School Year , cross referenced under Asthma Attacks , Injuries , and Grandmother . No one is throwing dirt on my memoirs until I’m sure they’re written and guarded from rain and snow and forgetting. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz.  Publisher:  Flutter Press, 2009

Fish shacks made out of wood scraps and old rusted zinc sheets, these were the houses I remembered most. Their nooks and crannies resonated under the weight of children at play, scratching the linoleum floors. Bats flew into the living room for a ringside seat of a dubbed Perry Mason rerun. I’d cover my hair and scream. Living was often in black and white, no worse than mother making us wash our hands every time we walked in the house.  We had more handkerchiefs than shoes.   I’d stop by the pharmacy on my way home from school to eye the records, Zippos, and Bulovas. Bought my first Beatles album there, swapped that Bulova my aunt gave me on my 13th birthday for Vetiver.  Days were as slow as a horse showing up in our living room on a hot, rainy day.  It wouldn’t move, it just stood there for as long as it rained, three or four days.  Mother would scream:  shoot it .  I’d wait until it dropped dead. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz.  Pub...

On Assignment We met in the Secret Service, On our first assignment we were briefed on the case of the kidnapped shoe. At lunch Sebastian came over to talk about life, the one we see and the one we live but never evoke. He took his shoe off, demonstrated the kidnapping. Suddenly, he brushed my elbow with his finger. I found myself undressing, promising him every satisfaction. All he needed to do was allow me to care of him for one year. If his desires were not fulfilled by then he could be unfaithful with any woman. I would watch them ignite my bed, humiliated. John?   Sorry Sebastian, I was picturing the shoe on wet asphalt. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, Publisher:  Flutter Press, 2009

Ronin Press will be publishing my next Chapbook.  I am so thrilled by this I had to let everyone know. Sergio

I too live in a death house. Root rot between sugar maple and dogwood burning my toes. But I'm not sad or thirsty, I've got the wind and a little piece of sky. When it thunders I stick my bones out, wait for rain, and smile. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, Publisher:  Flutter Press, 2009

The Shop This afternoon it will rain and I will wrap my fingers around your throat to submerge you in the rising water. You will kick and wriggle, fight because you won't let go of life voluntarily. You are driven to wake up and turn on the coffee percolator in your newly remodeled kitchen. Driven to fill the pantry and read the New York Times. You must find out if the justice was confirmed, if swine flu mutated in North Korea. Driven to give your wife multiple orgasms. You're afraid she'll fuck another man, a neighbor, or the woman she talks to at the post office about how little you please her. I will tighten my fingers around your throat and cut off the air. Your eyes will bulge. 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. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz:  Publisher, Flutter Press, 2009

The shot was fired and the child, stripped of more than a veil, turned from the false honor of stones. Weeds bleeding in dead men's eyes splattered her flesh muzzling a nameless crowd amidst applause. Together, on the back of a pick-up, rushing through fields of split fig, they rested after walking up to a water place. At home I wrestle with striking teachers, careful not to get hit by flying Yucca, suspicious of terms: Latin lover, communist, slave, tranny.  And I don’t have a job, or a single dream, but rivers of words transgressing, drive me mad as I join the picket line taking my bath to the middle of the street. ©    Sergio A. Ortiz, Publisher, Flutter Press, 2009

I don´t need to visit Africa, climb Kilimanjaro, or bathe in the Limpopo River. On Friday she is in my ankles, travels to the knees whenever I stand in front of a Barbary Dove. Saturday night, Africa boogaloo’s her way to my waist. by mid Sunday she jabs a shoulder. Monday she gazelles to an elbow and later creeps down to the waist. On Tuesday, I hop on one foot, then another. Slowly, my arm rises and Africa is inside my fist. But at midnight, when Wednesday turns into Thursday she steals my heart and beats like rada drums in the ceremonies of the vodoum. ©   Sergio A. Ortiz, Publisher:   Flutter Press, 2009

Before Darkness: A Trilogy Above We decided to hunt for butterflies on the other side of the fence, between old statues of father, in overgrown grass, the place he kept his untamed calf. Rolling towards the pit, (where civets churn out musk, and the sky gives way to night) was father's code to play, the list of sanctions too long for me to write. We put our catch in glass jars, pushed, touched, and joked in such a way as not to break my father's code. But in the end you kissed another man. Below They rested on the shoulders of statues. He said they perfumed summer with a kind of musk. We took the beautiful ones out of the jar, pierced with a pin and let them dry. The ministry of their wings kept us awake. We disappeared to the other side of the fence where father kept the untamed calf. He unbuttoned my pants. I didn't care, father had been dead for years, dead and all I wanted was another kiss. Between Father's co...

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: my neighbors standing outside packing axioms and any other thing they could find, guns, crucifixes, shovels. “Hi, we were wondering about the odor?” It’s not coming from here, I’m not quite dead yet. Occasionally, I see apparitions of myself standing by the window, or 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 eventually becomes water and 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. Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus ©   Sergio A. Ortiz, Publisher:   Flut...

. Abel was on the north corner of central plaza in El Paso when we met.  Eighteen, already adept at selling skin to one-eyed sirens. I am hard at it Ese , was his first answer. I do it for my family on the other side , was his pitch. Amigos? Amigos are dead presidents in my pocket. I like work, but breathing hurts when I don’t eat. Early the next morning, I passed through the plaza of poorly-paid services and noticed him lying on a bench resting the smile of a child who forgot who he was. He wanted Nikes, so I gave in. Bought him a suitcase, filled it with angry tears and a camera, then took him back to Chihuahua. I made him take snapshots of los hijos de puta . When his mother called, the constant fear of the 80s got in the backseat of my car. I didn’t want to know. It stayed until he died the following year. A few tears were gathered here and there; I sewed them each to each and made a rosary. Looking at it makes me think of a...