Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

winter solstice a cold that travels from my heart to the moon to the other side of silence

I stare at my hands look for visions  I haven't braved— a haven without sea surf or undertow

watching a ginkgo tree through a hospital window... should I say I'm sixty-three, or that I’m a devotee of Eros?

I am orbiting around your face my heart is like a fire-stone… sparks ignite my bones

you were my fallen flower a 1000 gifts of heavenly abundance my banquet of endings

Everything eventually comes to an end I've learned to disappear inside the cracks of the path along my shuttered house this is as far as I venture into empty space… I bond with the quartzes of a moaning night

we are ripe with gifts, the moon, the first rays of morning from the East, a coffer for a faithful heart

winter I have walked through your storms dreaming within the folds of frizzled viola petals

The Pianist We buried him yesterday. Night finds little, if any consolation in the embellished stars, and although I’ve stopped crying, I still sigh. I'm listening to music when there's nothing but the luscious scent of emptiness…my haunted past stares at the future

Torture Song I saw my face in a cell at Guantanamo electrocuting his genitals, my government waterboarding I saw my face in Ferguson right after being shot… a commanding surge blasted through the streets I saw my face in a man selling cigarettes on a NYC street corner screaming I can’t breathe , and I can’t breathe

wondering what it will feel like after he's gone pulled by a rope I walk through the dark

I'm going back to a time when I was  a woman … my kimono brushing  the arid ground

unmoored launched cloudward he dreams  with heavenly music— carnations tinged with love Spanish translation by Pedro Perez Osorio sin amarras lanzado hacia las nubes  sueña música celestial claveles teñidos de amor

let it rain may it all be suppressed your footsteps in the melting snow... climb through my window after dusk

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he planted palms along my driveway so dates could ripen before my sorrows... shadows in the stream