Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Someone     asked me for an Edelweiss from Rilke and suddenly the Poems              written by a younger me returned, as did the Notebooks                that caused me such heartache, the Elegies               with the terrible but necessary angel of beauty, the Sonnets and in them another           Flower whose name I can’t remember, the Diary       written on the shores of the Rhine, So many Hours,      so many images, so many winds from childhood, so many Places       that once were mine in The Distant Viper, my total nearness.

It is written against all innocence against the ditsy wind around my house the empty word games the aesthetics of a Viennese waltz. It is written by opening the veins until the cry is silenced.

Other farewells in the songs of Gloria Gaynor His name was Stephen. His figure was a ripe peach, a night branch full of stars, a flock of birds overflying the fragrant eucalyptus in the schoolyard. Something inside me shouts in protest: at first I was afraid, I was petrified… And I bleed and I curl up whenever he threatens with leaving on the train to oblivion.

cabalgó sobre los hombros del otoño— abrígame las cienes con la luz de éste último verano 

I am the child riding on the shoulders of autumn— shelter me with the light of last summer's leaves

dwelling inside this midnight exile I am myself a beast

In a country between life and death it's really strange that thing about our sexes flying but every time I'd enter you I'd hear a large flock of birds inside your forest and our sexes would resurrect like butterflies dazzled by fire in a country between life and death where economics is a science small investors of the soul are bamboozled on Wall Street Tenderness salaries are low and injustice in the World Market of Love is persistent ...I lift my soul to my nose to feel your perfume birds glide out of your sex no, further than that they come out of everything you value everything you give.

Sobre tu abdomen flor enmohecida tenme por amigo del águila que emprende vuelo hacia el túnel de Paris y se desploma en tus manos salpicados de violines al compás del amor el fuego nos cubre estallan los cuerpos sin consumir sus mechas ay, mi crepúsculo acostado sobre el horizonte de  mi costado me voy a matar para pasar la muerte tumbado sobre tu abdomen 

cuando muere la luz muere también la aurora por qué cuando pisas del otro lado ya no pisas como antes y el otro lado se convierte en mito adonde mis manos encontraron las tuyas en oración abrigada de fragmentos de pájaros goteando agua sobre el sueño el torrente que nos arrastra hacia la luz meridional que llevamos en el medio de nuestra propia luz

Tembló el mar lo descubrí en el nombre de  Alejandro asociación obligada por mi psiquiatra una vez se había producido el asesinato. Esperé a ver qué clase de mariposa salía de mi pecho antes de pronunciar mis últimas palabras se verán las caras de aquellos que tienen un corazón lleno de estrellas

He’s there, hidden in his rooms. I know his prehistoric gestures the beauty of his furniture the perfume floating on his couch. His anger occasionally shatters some of the porcelain ferrets around the red flowers nervously crinkling them. Their beauty provoke him. He rips and throws them away. Canopies fall on the bed. He parades feverishly around the rooms naked. Nothing satiates him. He lights up the fireplace admonishes the maid and ultimately frightening, with trembling snout, he throws himself on the sofa. Opens his legs caresses his nipples swaying hips and roars with the spasm

Erotica Babel is blind. He has no eyes so he touches, rubs his fingers over the words of men that in the terror of their silence know there's a secret. Babel’s pleasure is fast and hard, it comes from far away and rumbles inside my heart with the noisy jolt of a sleepwalking volcano. It drags an ancient mud. There are broken bird feathers in its pubic hair.

insomnia, a piece of man, an aquarium full of hissing snakes, and I’m alone, naked on the bed sheet  imitating zodiac signs.

Elegy I dreamed about you, you were just like you were, no slip-ups in your voice, motionless shadows for arms, and statuesque genitals. You copied yourself, you were nothing but the foam of your own life. I felt you were deified verse in my dream. My sadness did not fit the bottom of my pain, and so I went to stain the night in purple. The noise your legs made could have awakened a pond, the hours that never went beyond bloodletting, the silence of many windows. Tenderness wept from one of your nipples to the other. Last night I dreamed about you and I couldn’t tell you my secret —because love is a magnificent apple tree with copper fruits wrapped in skin made from the intelligence of leaves that recall the future, and roots like arms mired in the snows of sainthood— even my fingers couldn’t find you in your perfection. My very presence would be violent, so violent  I'd fill you with wonder.

You come at night with the fabulous smoke of your black hair trees and trees of sorrow my body catches fire and quivers the eternal is immobile stones thrown into the windstorm tend to become unique oh tree, my heart parts from a faraway place to reach your brow with nocturnal beasts in its eyes and blocks that fall from its hands you immerse me in the phosphorescent sea where my being comes to life I roll down the slope of your body to your feet twin constellations in this earthly night where we read the history of the world

the bitterness the white corals of your eyes the scintillating blows to your temples the wave that erases the sparkle in your eyes the tapestry the putrid flower the delicate aroma of your armpits the equestrian turtle of your fingers sailing across my skin

el agua lenta los caminos ligeros accidentes suspendidos en el aire el tiempo se anuda para echar raíces sobre nuestros cuerpos desnudos y yo alisaré tus pelos hasta llegar a tu boca

Love Letter to an Imaginary Indian Lover March 26, 2016 that intimate place between your legs —my black obsidian god with a diamond head— that drags and throws me into the sea of assumptions my beautiful night demon with implacable testicles of a tiger whose semen— running ember from which the Milky Way proceeds— fills me like a well of light I will never forget you yet in vain do I now demand the thirst of fire before the twisted landscape of my life

A teenage love poem To those who gave me their love in return for very little I love you because you write poetry on the urgent edges of your empty room. Because you've attached verbs to the pain that invades you and even when you can't remember I’m Sergio it's me who accompanies you through the travesty of names. And because you say, you’re beautiful, and leave with the dawn. I love you because you took me to the river and the flight of birds that nest in the water. You place your hand on my shoulder to give me the encouragement I sometimes lose. Because you stare me down and wink your eyes to make me follow, you inspire, and welcome me, sustain me in the air when I'm flying aimlessly or when I've lost my bearing.

your body, the gap through which the crystals of dreams usher forth... (aimless women) never to return to Ithaca