Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

(from a collection of poems on how to drive a child insane) He was playing the organ, or at least the keyboard made out of cardboard box his stepfather had brought him in place of a real organ. His stepfather forced him to perform on that cardboard box for months.  When the organ finally arrived, it was as if he were insane.  The sounds that came out of that hellish machines were nothing like the sounds he had practiced.

Para Cuando                      He leído los hilos de las telarañas para descubrir como blanquear mis piernas heridas.  He caminado sobre brazas para tirar del corazón a la razón.  Mas nada me ha servido de alivio. Me sigo gastando a solas bajo los puentes de Ámsterdam a la altura de un cuerpo seco. He vivido tantos años que no siento la brisa, solo la resequedad en mi lengua. He sentido tanto temor que ni el cielo me brinda consuelo.  He nadado sin cesar para nunca llegar a mi tiempo justo. Y así sigo, sin justicia, como un mapuche desterrado de la realidad de la tierra madre por carabineros dispuestos a matar. 

Letting Go I found you in the image of my dreadfully saturated loneliness, then I let you go.

Dear poet, I know right now you feel as if the words have dried out and the metaphors are caught in spider webs, but your hunger for dirt will soon be over.  cured of this nostalgia, new images will follow you around.  

Insomnia  I was tormented by the immense desolation with which Aureliano’s ghost had looked at me, the deep nostalgia which that specter felt for the living was as touching as my dream of a city with mirrors for walls. Months later when he finally showed up again, he came to my window with the disease of insomnia.  In his bones he had the forgetfulness of death.      His thoughts, monsoons of darkness, were lying to me, imbedding in my limp skin hopes of a new beginning where our numbers increased from two to four, and wild dreams strangled my roots like a banyan with handfuls of hate.

“There is a man for me,” he would insist on telling his mother in the dream. But, all she wanted to hear about were his studies.  So, he would eagerly explain to her about how well he was doing in school.  “I’ve come up with a study plan unlike anyone else’s.  a cuckoo bird flew over the nest morning moon His ear would hurt, but he’d continue writing.   He’d wake up happy to have dreams about his mother, it was as if he had finally captured her attention. little boy blue sat on a stool He lives better in his dreams than in reality.  He is happier there. addicted to sleep a monsoon rain pouring over him his blood thins out, he has no wrinkles. he’s ironed out flat.  

The Space of Solitude Dawn surprised me on the patio without daring to sleep.  I took to the jungle and built myself a house without windows where the pirates of my nightmares could not reach me.  Orchids occupied a space of solitude and exclusion, forbidden to birds.  Everything resembled a tight forest of flowers with the sea at a short distance. I was alien to the existence of my people, because I considered infancy as a period of mental shortage, and because I was usually too absorbed in my own chimerical speculations. I was alone in my space, the solitude tolerable. 

sortilege Death continued to haunt him,  sniffing his pants without  deciding to give him  the final blow. However, he looked as if he could  understand the other side  while maintaining a grip  on everyday life, until the  world got sad forever.

el museo de la inocencia músicos y pecadores merodeaban mi casa para aquellos tiempos.  Uno, incluso, llego a escalar la ventana de mi habitación. seguro de sí mismo, me tomo en sus brazos y me llevo a la mesa de la cocina. yo lo miraba lleno de curiosidad porque todavía no me asustaba la vida.   

Narcisos El tiempo se deshace de mis huellas.   Se vuelve líquido indómito arruinado los narcisos de tu otoño. Yo tiemblo con el deseo de poseerte como cuando navegaba por la primavera de la adolescencia lleno de tu semen. Pero tú no te acuerdas de mis labios ni te hacen suspirar los danzones de mi cintura, mas yo sigo oculto en ti.

Tango The music was a dying echo, a dislocation of rhythm and morals, the true index of his mind. Much like a young warrior, exulting in the vision of his most recent combat. 

at the temple of friendship one smiles at the turnip and winks at the yams laughs with the carrots and sings with the bees in an eighteenth-century pillared summerhouse where ladies prefer their tea without the company of men ringed in black by the vampires of solitude

Safe Night has a way of making me safe, a sort of regretful reason that doesn’t exist in the sunlight.

Last Judgment  I tried to feel  my heart yet there was nothing there except row  upon row of saints  warming themselves in the sunlight  of a winter morning.   They were silent and in eternal  isolation.

March 30 I run to the door hopeful that he is there but my brown eyes swim with terror as I open the door to the gunk of all my yesterdays rotting in the hollow of my skull. I sit at the kitchen table nibbling on the bonbon of sin until I cast off my identity musing on the scent of gardenias, lost in a subtle metaphor of blood festering in a crypt.

Grown Apart She’s my sister, but we’ve grown apart. Her feathers have turned a coral colour, and her bill is blue.  She’s not easy, the moon gets caught in her jittery nervous system. She is very still, at her center she is still, very still with misunderstanding.

The Game of Solitaire   Don’t you just wish you had written that obituary? Time: a waterfall of love and peace splashing on the reef of life.   These were his thoughts as they placed the flowers on the casket.  Could they tell he had already found another body to keep  him warm  in the winter of his life? There is no shame in not wanting to live without the company of a woman. But shouldn’t there be a time to think about the loss. Men are different in that respect, they fear the cold solitude of the morning after.

Our Sister of the Swamps She brushes her hair and climbs into the car pig-headed about the weekend dance even when she knows every sleaze in town will be there pitching his fork for a piece of her ass she’s not familiar with love but is adamant about finding out Our sister of the swamps has a way with men she stuffs her bra with tissue and puts on the lavender hot-pants She’s going to have a ball even if it is with some confused dyke that doesn’t care what it is she’s got between her legs swamp fever will do you in every time She’s hopeful she won’t get asked out by some self-absorbed idiot that never reads although she’s ready with the eye-liner just in case, she needs to go punk and scare somebody off

Body Parts pristine alphabets and cows moo as they jump over the moon to his back yard come the bodiless to barter vision endlessly the disfigured wait in the dark to see the results before they also bargain it’s never easy to get the right fit flesh doesn’t attach well enough to be considered art