Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

undertow there are blows in life so powerful we just succumb  and the water  pours in through our mouths and out of our ears and there are things we see just before drowning mountains, daisies rivers, and the bodies of the people we had been and the bodies  of the people we had loved and we wonder why we were born human

It started on a Summer Day in the 50’s It was at some church retreat in the 50’s. She said something about Christ’s resurrection. They started to gossip about the impress of Christ’s vanishing. The meeting ended and they folded their wooden chairs. She matched his telling with listening, and more listening.  Whatever the case, she listened. Everyone, except my grandmother,  found him impossible, including me, especially me. He scuffed the wind with his sneaky nature, offended  the rotting oaks by the solemn river bank every time he got near my mother. But there was little I could do. I’ve waited this long to say: Mother, it was your failure. Up to the very end, you failed to see him for what he truly was.

I love the simplicity of our mutual puzzle … I have roads whose secrets never end you are neither sun nor moon

the day ends on a wet bed of leaves— I was ready for new experiences the old ones burned out they lay in little ash heaps along the roadside while I sat on a rock

the storm a dog looking for a place to sleep listen to it growl at the boulevard its broken sidewalks weeds in every crack feel the rain fall and cool   your sweaty flesh like a snuffed candle think of someone sleeping in a row-boat tied to mangrove root undisturbed by the rain or the dog

drifting depressed because my books weren't nominated for a Lammy fierce like Plath’s “great African cat,” I have let things slip the flowers need water but they weigh me down with the present of life eat everything I breathe like dangerous animals, free, and completely empty gift nameless, flat, black and white intrusion of eyes I am a new persona caught in a neurotic stillness, anesthetized until there is little, if anything, left to do but sleep I dream about alcoholic binges one night stands in bathhouses where the thick vapor of lust fogs my sense of identity and cold mouths suck on my face I am wrapped inside my own mirror laughing, struggling with my pride until I break loose step on the needle shards of my life tamed, old, fat looking for a way out of this room where I once felt the need to write about myself until the tulips turned red the guilt...

I love the clarity of our mutual puzzle I have roads whose secrets never end and no, I am not a sun or a moon I am a woman, no more and no less … you are so much yourself ... I am so much other than myself right here before you... if I were another on this road, I would have hidden my emotions in that suitcase, so my poem would be of water behind the borders of echo ...

I will be years gathering up our words,   fishing out snapshots, leaning my ribs against the durable cloth of your death

the heart is a coffer holding the image of light within us ... a bird in flight

Only the Rumor  Published in Salt River Review  Volume 13, Number 1 & 2, Fall/Winter 2010 I, who have rarely seen sanity, or a caravan of Siberian huskies stroll with their pack through the soft white snow, have no appreciation for winter's twilight-silence, or the ruckus of grizzlies ravaging my provisions. I ask: Is anyone willing to put their hand in place of mine on the chopping block, or their signature on paper to demand investigations into all that has been stolen on my passage through this life? I have not witnessed tenderness, nor do I feel excitement upon observing the child fed from the safety of its mother's hands. Only rumors of the existence of distant cities, where harsh winters outlast serene summers, accelerate the rhythm of my blood. That chill is mine. I, who have rarely felt reason, have played with water and snow. I've wrapped them around my legs, given them form with my hands like a lover. ...

tears... the natural bleeding  of a wound 

my secret hiding place... the boy I was calls out to me in noises that he makes?

plaster hands set apart in a sculptor's studio... frozen like the kiss of snow, their loveliness dazzling me

a perfect Sunday... yet when we touch we touch our mountains and fields and rivers of grief

we mate, then starve, wait inches apart to die, to share fully each burning moment

I could see him walking through the sea grapes . . . luna moths flutter  towards each other like exotic birds

I seek a permanent home, a guarded space where an oak tree stands motionless against the sky

an irresistible light brushes through the angel-wing begonias— moon over water, the luminescent burning of space