Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Of The Boar Another delay!  I'll have plenty of time to think about him.  Was he always two? The one that disappeared with my boyfriend that last year of college was the one I hated.  He'd talk down to me and turn right back into his original mannequin self, wave  his hand in a fury whenever I interrupted him while he gossiped on the phone. That one never knew I heard all the ugly things he ever said about me.  Yet I remained his friend for over thirty years.  I should have dropped him off on his head in the Ukraine as soon as I realized why he fell from that balcony in Connecticut. There's a wild boar walking through the city in the pouring rain.  He wears a traditional Scythian neckerchief, but the foul odor of betrayal gives him away.  Everyone knows when he approaches and they move away.  And here I was thinking I’d write about Tamara and her baby.  Another delay! ©  Sergio A. Ortiz  May 5, 2010

Dream Prism A cornlike monster with ugly tang fish gills dreams of becoming a mermaid prodigy dishing out rhymes to a clown farther off than Australia.  She travels with a fat English prawn and a psychotic pickle renown for his voodoo medicine; His license revoked after performing a fatal bypass on an Italian bean. Their eyes turned yellow in the shade- less sockets of stillborn lizards.  Seven stop signs grew from their toes.  They were thieves, untouchables in the crevice of a very small toad, comfortless as vinegar.  They found my chiseled amethyst love letters and turned them to angels weeping dead, icy heads.  But I budded  as a May amapola and ascend  just like my grandmothers before me ascended. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, April 1, 2010

To the Zookeeper on the Hudson This poem was taken down because it has been accepted for publication. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, April 30, 2010

On Their Eightieth Birthday dedicated to the Governor of Arizona The poem has been accepted for publication.  I will put it back up after it gets published. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, April 29, 2010

Queridos amigos, (Dear friends)   Quiero invitarlos a que escuchen a Calle 13 - Musica urbana from de Island of Porto Rico, BORICUA!!!!   Allow me to turn you on to Puerto Rican Urban music-  RESIDENTE CALLE 13 MUA!  pApI TU SABES QUE TE AMO!

On My Own Will there be a change in your voice next winter?  —I prefer to shelter it with rum, walk through the monkey-puzzles in the Andes.  Their leaves are as thick and tough as my hands, scale-like with sharp edges, heaving like my heart.  The winds coming from the Pacific fan out my reptilian branches.  Black-faced Ibis fly overhead.  At least I know they will return next spring. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, April 28, 2010

Dead Cats and Poisoned Frogs The feverish python made you shrink like all the other little Hamlet's Cerberus bribes: Business men in silk ties, boogieing Isadora’s whose scarves tangle when they trundle around the globe choking on meth-amphetamines. They grease the bodies of social security millionaires in the back of warehouses. You bring me Mariachis, or Japanese paper moons on my birthdays, but I am a virgin attended by banana breads, and an old withered Madeleine. Money is the sperm fluid dead cats and frogs take to your bed—your breakfast, along with freshly cut roses imported from Iran while you listen to drums announce the countdown for yet another electoral confrontation.

The Rival taken down for publication ©  Sergio A. Ortiz April 25, 2010

By Sergio A. Ortiz Dear Friend,         I went to this protest thinking it was going to be a community protest of no great consequence. I had no idea of the seriousness of the problem in Old San Juan, a city that is hundreds of years old. Four days ago, I walked through this very site and took photographs of this garden on the side of La Casa Rosa. That photograph is in an album at Facebook. Yesterday, this was all that was left of that garden. To make things worse I walked by a couple cats that had been poisoned.           Some of you may already be wondering who to hold responsible for this atrocious act of stupidity and brutality, in Spanish we call it a "BURRADA". Well I have been informed that the donkeys on which to pin the tail for this criminal act are the First Lady of Puerto Rico and her friend, the First Lady of the city of San Juan. A city that is hundreds of years old and that has been the victom of donkey...

Postcard to Willie Perdomo April 22 nd 2010 Willie, papi, Sorry I missed you at my alma mater But judging from the way you’ve cut the amapolas And all those barrio pitchers and jungle leopards You write about, I thought it would be best if I waited For the right milky constellation  To appear before we actually met.  So much has gone down in these two years.  I still don’t see men like me in your poems, But if the barrio is anything like the island I know I’m in there somewhere. By the way, listen to this:  You didn’t just toe me an inch, no — Nor leave me to set my small bald eye Skyward again, without hope … Negro, you should know better than to take me Seriously, it’s all Klonopin And lithium, gang rapes and LSD. Promise you’ll read my manuscript. It won’t disappoint you, or the guys in the barrio. tuyo por el resto de esta fucking vida sergio ©  Sergio A. Ortiz April 22nd, 2010

To the Crying Venusians dedicated to Ashley Santiago and Steven L ópez Mercad both brutally murdered trans-gender people living in Puerto Rico My skin shrieks, a cave dweller notified of yet another death, filaments by which the eagerness  of penguins annihilate memories of dwindling oceanic twilight.  I did not want to leave a trail for redheaded dragons with fiery tongues to terrify empty lighthouses, meadows and the jingles of readers on my day of resurrection. Queen Lazarus unwraps my feet with the grace of a deer tutoring my hands in the art of dying. Daddy, daddy, daddy my knees are skin and bone. I wear a pink triangle and numbers tattooed around my ankles. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, April 21, 2010

The Illusion You punish me to provide a spectacle of excess—tamp my testicles with affirmations of your power. Your mannequins blow and breathe urgency like naked bald-hydras morgue between Santiago and Lima where desert sands are voiceless. What is different between us is the intensity of our attraction. Oh, how many nooses I've stretch around the necks of gigolos at cul-de-sac social clubs where cellos moan and mouths wilt as I listen to tangos and pick up sugar dropped on the table trying to ignore the blood on my recently buffed shoes. ©   Sergio A. Ortiz, April 19, 2010

Año XIV • Nº 229 5 de abril de 2010  Cagua, Venezuela Poemas  Sergio Ortiz cuando el otoño no se acuerda su nombre el timbre tiene que cambiar y así se ha hecho todos los timbres suenan para querer, devolver la movilidad de tu conciencia, la que no te vale nada como el  kayak  que usas cuando nadas por las nubes tocando tu tendón de Aquiles un poco envejecido bombón envejecido y embustero a ti te mueve el dinero las conchas secas la cintura estrecha pero envejecida tu zapato derecho la máscara que usas al correr diez millas de grama linda putos zapatos mi pobre pueblo decenas de ranas y reptiles políticos invadieron su pozo ahora todos nos odiamos virus de zapos con  “putos zapatos” de cocodrilo La seducción Para aquellos días íbamos a la playa a practicar el tiro al blanco: la seducción. Aprendimos inglés, o francés. Leer quitaba un poco la mancha de plátano así es que no faltaba el  bestseller. Se usaba la palabra...