Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

I sing like a bird among moon-drawn vineyards in a town of shadow-draped churches and gossip with the clouds

to a wildflower meadow on the outskirts of Kyoto I let the rain bathe me through my shirt and walk away unharmed

light as air I sit on my doorsteps— an alpha dog comes home to die for the day

he stands among my mother’s  roses a metaphor packed  with the sound  and fury of a wounded  tongue

Me preocupa el silencio, los mensajes ocultos, la ceguera de los celos, los muros manchados con sangre inocente, las metáforas que no entiendo, las espinas escondida del racismo, la estafa del viento, el vaivén de mi resaca. Me preocupa el olvido.

a simple thing like running home head first, a welcome from the waiting fields, a gentle fall in clover       who sings with the dying so much of the past cries out for utterance who won’t turn the page

good morning heartbreak, meet your sister pain, she thaws out yesterdays into gorgeous rain

to those of small flame who feed off envy and grow old quickly…   live out your lives in hunger

everyone  has a heartache  the sky is breaking  with rain  and all the flights  are delayed there’s no way back  to where we’ve been

*dreams end        in a beautiful man's body wind of longing you cover me with pollen keep me spinning beyond your arms Citation:  Cyrus Cassells  "Beautiful Signor" and    "no dread of nakedness." and  Yeats, “The Phases of the Moon”  

your suicide note, a kind cop sent it to me, a poet  sent me  your death certificate... in the nest the unwoven, the unraveled   

Undertow Tanka Review Kindly submit up to 10 previously unpublished  tanka &/or  1 sequence “Undertow Tanka Submission” to undertowtanka@gmail.com by August 15, 2014 / first Issue At the end of your submission, please include your full name and country of residence.  All rights revert to authors upon publication. Your tanka must not be under consideration elsewhere or submitted to any contest.  Hopefully this will become a print Review in the near future. Best wishes, Sergio Ortiz,   Editor

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 ...