Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Nkosi Johnson   - South African AIDS Advocate, he died of the disease at the age of 12 Ebony Heroes Mandela, what did you touch, tact, tack, touch in prison all those years? Biko our skin is slightly lighter in our history’s memory than in our mirror.  Excuse me?  What language do, or did, you speak? The one we still refuse to acknowledge:  trust, the mirage we call the root of culture.  The one we defend with loud slogans when our knees stop shaking. Biko, what did you touch, tact, tact, touch as they cracked your head open in detention? My Mexican brother touched a bat while walking back home from work.  You ask:  Where are their prisons, their torture chambers?  I answer: on our streets. Nkosi, what did you touch, tact tact, touch before you died of AIDS? Where was your fear at twelve? Why didn’t you walk away? They call themselves Old Christians yet spoor the touch, the tack, of ebony heroes that show us the way. 

Adobo Criollo Use four teeth of garlic; make sure they’re not too sweet.  Joe walked home last night, brought the mangoes, their taste blends well with lemon adobo.  Be careful when you mince the onion, Elegua does not like the crying. Don’t forget the sour milk, ask a girl from Marrakech to sell you some warm goat milk. If her mother has mustard butter, buy three pounds, but don’t you even think of sticking your fingers in any of it.  I fear you'll fall asleep and perish on your way back home. Dig a hole in the backyard of the house, clean as if you had the midwife’s hands. Find mesquite and set the fire.  Wait until the breast begins to brown before you start to drink the home brew. Mimic slaughtered pigs: front feet tucked and tied, back feet spread, then glaze with leftover marinade.  Look back, and don’t forget last season.  Put down the beer and when the pig is done, untie, untie  and  dance all night

Girl in Fulton Street They’re not really strangers reflecting off the windows, they’re men walking on a crowded street.  I am one of them, a girl in drag annulling the neon lights clearing my way through a wilderness of cocks.

The Morgue Here the milky quartz in the river delivers its pain to my hands.  Sometimes boredom cradles the climate of my skin as if a drained river had  infected  the morgue of old images, the glittering eyes of a dead comet goldfish, you spread my legs and penetrate.  Sometimes the river never stops  digging and I’m left swimming among the reflections of escaped water.

La Mota del Ojo Así dios comenzó el universo. 

Good Morning Gulliver Welcome to my day Gulliver, the dogma of “no strings attached” embellish my fingers and toes.  Welcome to the nausea tranquilized by the calla’s bribe allowing the animal beneath the skin to sleep.  Welcome to my Mapplethorpe’s finger fuck, three dimensional and stepping-off what’s left of hair, lips, eyes with all its deleterious offspring fastening a rope around my neck to asphyxiate the desire to hate or love.  Welcome to the libretto of my aging crevices touching and melting no one.

Donde el corazón nunca para construí mi casa con la determinación idílica de que no tendría paredes miré mi mocedad grabada sobre tu poesía con el único ojo que tengo mis sueños y en los soles sextantes de mis versos quede ciego estaba contemplando nuestra muerte cuando me di cuenta de que no estaba solo tú estabas desnudo sobre un montículo de grama el pecado… el pecado lamí la sal de tu ombligo como un sátiro como una puta vieja relame a su querubín 

Where hearts never stand I built my house with the idyllic determination that it would not have walls looked at the engraved greenery of your poetry with the only eye I have my dreams   in the sun's sextants I went blind       deaf and       mute contemplating death I understood I was not alone you were naked on a mound of grass      the sin    the sin I licked the salt around your navel like a lecher an old whore kisses a cherubim 

The beaker is full of thick, dark blood.  Silence! Mother stuck a clothes-hanger up her nose trying to unclog the vacuum cleaner. It was full of scarlet pimpernel.  Father fainted. She asked one of us to call 911.  The fireflies are drunk, they’ve forgotten the path to the sun and bleed in a cave near a cliff.  Silence, mother fears the chafing in our stare.

Padded Apocalyptic In Emerald City

To the insolence of a scream The new big bang, is it the cry of an Emperor’s tired mule, or the screaming scent of night blooming jasmine?  Perhaps it is the riddles of the blue men of the Minch enchanted by the chocolate fragrance of the night, or the turquoise  music of the deckhands.  The new big bang, we got so dressed up  for that event we looked like mannequins who vomited because  worrying builds up fat.   

The Phone Call I turn my face and I am ten sitting by the phone waiting for your call.  All my dead are in a field of butchered children striving to appease this racing blood. I’ll renounce every grudge with a million oaths, press out every umbrage that fills my chest with pus if that phone rings and you ask for me, your only son... mother.

In This Well Come, there are no bodyguards in this well, only a shrine covered with crosses and a high mast fanned by invisible winds.  These mud walls regularly flinch like a drunken homosexual who just found out he’s HIV positive. “I want flowers, arum lilies, gardenias, and tulips; it’s the end of the year, time to celebrate.  Oh, and don’t forget to rent Gone with the Wind .  Please, no ashes, I want to be a diamond on a flashing white finger."

Tinta Entintar tu cuerpo con la nada  Sobre mi piel anudada  Es borrar la esquina de nuestro arrabal  Devolver los ojos tajeados al paredón de mi niñez.  Cible D'encrage de votre corps avec rien sur ma peau nouée Est effacé nôtre ghetto Rendre les yeux coupassent au mur de fusill é s de mon enfance. Ink Inking your body into nothing On my very knotted skin Erases the corner of our ghetto Returns these slashed out eyes to the executioner's Wall of a sad and lonely youth. الحبر بلدان منكم الهيئة لا تملك شيئا مني جدا باﻵخرين الجلد أو زاوية نظرنا الغيتو عودة هؤلاء الى تخفيضها في عينيه ألا في جدار الحزن على أعمال الشباب.

Time Waits Once I was a mute rock, a muffled accordion, smothered cello hiding in my secret pain, wearing a trench coat of unidentified emotions.   There was always the fear I would break and everything I’d worked so hard to cover up with fancy rhinestone mustangs would gallop forth in all its rawness to be ripped apart. Time waits for the first of us to speak, then opens up a city hydrant.   That’s when our language disappears, and all we hear is the resonance of laughter.

I wrote the poem below this tango. Harassed, because I woke up humming this song for two days in a row.  I guess that when a poem wants to be written it will do just about anything to show its strength. Sergio