Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Among those that Tackle Trash to Miguel Hernandez on his centenary This poem has been accepted for publication Entre Aquellos que Enfrentan la Basura a Miguel Hernández en su centenario Este poem ha sido aceptado para publicacion. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz May 21, 2010

Submissions and the online workshops : In preparation of flying on my own. I can’t remember the exact date I joined my first online workshop.  I was on very strong medication.  That year cursed me with four or five serious bipolar episodes.  A hurricane settled right over my hometown, Jayuya, and it felt like a physical expression of the metaphorical world I was living in.  By the way, I took a picture of the hurricane when its eye was over my apartment building.  I had to step out into the open space.  The sky had suddenly turned yellow.           An American friend from the States living in Arecibo brought me a Toshiba laptop.  He gave it to me and begged me to stop taking all the medication I was taking.   But I was convinced that if I stopped I would commit suicide, or do something worse.  I began to write about my pain, the pain provoked by the loss of my grandmother, my uncle, my lover, and finally ...

The one thing that made racism a lot more devastating in Philadelphia was the fact that it came from all directions.  That was something I never expected.  I was white enough to be hated by blacks, dark enough to be hated by whites, and educated enough to be hated by my own.  To the people in my religion in Philly, mostly whites and blacks from the city, I had the last name of a dear friend (I say friend, but we had not yet met), Lucas Ortiz, who just happened to be as loud, opinionated, and as visible as I was.  No surprise there, he was a a Social Work academic and we all know they tend toward the left.  Everyone thought we were brothers.  We shared the same vision of how racism had affect our religious community, and so neither of us was popular.  Until I reached out to the blacks in my religious community.  Mr. Morris, an HIV positive black man (Lucas was also living with HIV), moved in to my house.  That meant I had greater contact with...

Phone Calls, Pleas for Oneness, and Cucarachitas -What shall I buy? ¿Qué me compraré?  -Lo que quiera usted, whatever you want, dócil Martinita. -Didn’t you just say that a lot louder than the rest. -Kikiriki, was the rooster’s response to all this mess. -Uuu, croac’d the frog next. -I see you’re getting all pretti’d up and beautiful  Martina. Wan’na … go out on a date? -On a date, at night? Sorry, there’s a little matter  of trust we must address before I go out with YOU at night. -I thought you’d ask me about my croac, croac, croac? -No, Señor frog, I may not be pretty  but I haven't survived this long for nothing. (That was when el ratoncito Peréz joined the conversation.)  -Mister ratón, what do you do at night, asked la cucarachita. -Give me a call Martina, but make sure it’s not after ten, not before seven, and never at eight.  I watch my novela at eight. -Ah, sighed la cucarachita: A ratoncito always calls cucarachitas first....

Racism and the submitting Hispanic Poet Three years ago, when I first started submitting my poems to literary journals I came across my first challenges in the writing world.  I did not have the experience to immediately identify the reasons for some of the things that were happening, but one of these challenges was definitely making me uncomfortable and I was going to burst if I kept quiet about it.  So I wrote to these journals that had submission managers and told them that I could not submit because the managers did not have any of the US territories listed separately from the States. Every time I wanted to submit something through a submission manager, the process came to a halt as soon as the manager asked me for a "State," much like the day I went to apply for a job as an assisted-life social worker for adult Down Syndrome clients at a Philadelphia facility.  That experience came back to me like a ferocious lion.  I spent over half an hour trying to convin...

Illegal #6 this poem was accepted for publication.  I will put it back up 30 days after it gets published. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, May 18, 2010

Words The incidental whore, with The Accidental Tourist. The view from here in A Room with a View. Once a thief, always a thief? Once a Lady, always a Lady! Whore.  A word that describes a youthful challenge. But, now what? View.  I took down the windows last March, on the wake of my fifty ninth birthday. Sixty. Accidental names for numbers, words with windows, views reaching out and stepping on proverbs. When I’m dead if you call me a whore I’ll come back and shake your bed, make you think it’s an earthquake, hijo’e puta, ja-ja! ©   Sergio A. Ortiz May 17, 2010

Adèle This poem was taken down because it has been accepted for publication. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, May 16, 2010

Write Yourself Sober: Memoirs of a Puerto Rican not from El Barrio A veces te sientes como si anduvieras en el hoyo negro de alg ú n universo recién descubierto, meciéndote en la nada, esperando que un día vengan por ti. Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Epidemiología I just got home from a workshop given by the award winning Puerto Rican writer Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro.  She was great, more like fabulous, yes, fabulous is the word I am looking for.  She did what I expected a good experienced writer would do, which was; turn me on to a few “new to me” Puerto Rican writers and put me to work.  She read two of her own poems, after which I mumbled: “que fuerte,” because her poems were in that right in your face persona I love to assume myself.  She read from a couple of short stories written by contemporary Puerto Rican writers that were amazing, and we went right into writing a poem.  In this case it was a queer poem because this is all part of  “La Tercera Jorna...

Transparencia “Se va el caimán, se va el caimán…” ¿De qué está hecho usted, mimo de palmas y pies pintados con henna?  ¿Cuánto más aceptara el aire envenenado que le deja respirar ese maldito caimán norte ñ o?   Endeble marco de mierda, afine la malla de organza para la serigrafía que su imaginación intenta pintar.   Cuándo seque la lona no se olvide de limpiar la cárcel atestada de recuerdos, los ecos de estudiantes inocentes asesinados a balazos en los balcones de nuestra Autónoma Universidad.

Mírame bien para Samantha, con todo mi amor empieza por los talones, sigue hacia arriba… lento: allettare nel mio ballo di testa, las pléyades que trazaron cada pincelada mía con sus labios. ¿Cuánto crees que te cueste el grito entre las grutas de este beso mío, beso desde el abismo perlado de mi piel, quest'elíxir di buchi della serratura? Ven, comienza por los dedos de mi pie.  Deseo toda tu venganza, tu drama, tu pretencioso diseño de hombre angelical. ©   Sergio A. Ortiz, May 13, 2010

The Appetite This poem was accepted for publication.  I will put it back up after it gets published. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, May 13, 2010

She’s a homophobic warlord with a miniature bible carefully tucked in her bra It started before she could read at Sunday mass she’d stare at the faces of immovable angels— La Madonna and byzantine saints in cut-glass windows—imagining herself speaking to the masses. When her boobs started growing the junior high jock, a prodigy bible-belt-preacher, invited her to Watchtower study classes.  They graduated from high school, got married, and filled-out their NRA applications on the very same day. Everything was stasis,  the end of the end, until she walks-in  on her husband and the church's accountant, a six foot love gift from the Castro district. Two hundred nineteen years after La Bastille she remarried, joined a New Age theosophy movement learned to suck her thumbs and self flagellate while screaming slogans about the constitutional rights of breeders at a famous prime-time puppeteer program in Puerto Rico. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, May 11, 2010

My second chapbook was just published and it is up. You are all welcomed to read it! Chapbook Links: topography of a desire ' W r iters List Ronin Press your friend always, Sergio

Olive Harvesters This poem was accepted for publication.  I will put it up after it is published. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz May 9, 2010

Interview # 1:  Apprehensions —Did you ever recover that stuffed replica of your male body?  A band of roaming gamines brought it back after a heated cha-cha-cha session with the police. (Through the scrims corps de ballet cheer up every Parisian cliché.) —When did mannequins lose their minds? When they discovered time was their tailor. —What would you do with a broken female femur in a safe deposit? I’d take it out for walks, pet it, make sure this abeyance doesn’t cause it inflammation. —Cook the sole of its black boot until it’s tender? ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, May 9, 2010

The Need for Thumbs We've already spent too many late afternoons creating a town full of exquisite corpses. What we really need is a new Visa card. One we can access without thumbs. We're flat, our mouths are full of halcyon holidays and losing horses. Two in the third, one the fifth. Everything's falling from us, kindness, pieces of our nose. Not even sugar crystals can fix these fallen rings. We're dead and cannot smile because the sky for us is silence. The sound of jazz comes from the blood melted on what's left of our eyelids. ©  Sergio A. Ortiz, May 7, 2010