Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

there are birds trapped in those shadows they're bursting  with untold happiness... bird songs awaken the dead 

you were seated in the fires of ambivalence -- born into violence I wake up tired of wading through storms of ashes

I've changed the furniture,  rewritten our relationship back  to its beginning...  strangers dancing at a bar  in Amsterdam

beyond grief and grievance Je suis Charlie

breathless moments breaking me down drunk on grief 

standing at the door  pieces of a great mystery

autumn comes with a price… the world caves in on itself, yet at the river's edge a heron lifts in flight

there's nothing here but speech, the words we  fill the dark with hoping for a rescue party knotted in the lines

on the bridge  to my next huge sadness... water

shadows pierced by the sun confetti

don't stop the rain from falling on my wings my eyes  are swimming in your breast... a minute for the two of us

a mountain  of love letters hidden  in the air shaft—  forlorn in a house of sticks

how long have we stood  at the end of the dock, a  wishbone fit to pop

my dreams like kites at the apex of some huge sorrow-- a flapping sound on new year's eve ~~~ after a tanka by Shaku Choku

let me climb these mountain ridges ... my mantra, scuffed by winter winds, heals my bloodshot eyes

confetti a sunrise I faintly remember

poplars mark my pathway gathering bones