Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

walking like a mortal The truth is I still don’t know who you are, my black Adonis, but I’ll leave you my wings on the piano’s edge.

from Diary of a Venezuelan Transgender Woman A translation of Ezdras Parra’s poem: “Si me apoyo en el desvelo, vuelvo al mayor asombro...” If I hold on to sleepless nights, I return to the greatest amazement   I travel with birds in my agony and place my defenses in the avalanche or restless months I’m not just passing through and I don’t know how to hesitate although I hear something like a subterranean flow of air under my feet the murmur of my innocence I am the unescorted pedestrian that lengthens the footpath.

from Diary of Venezuelan Transgender Woman A translation of Ezdras Parra’s poem:  Al fin y al cabo solo existe esta sombra harapienta  At the end of the day there is just this raggedy shadow to where I’ve been condemned without pain, without complaining the place where I pound my firewood and grind my bread where I gather my scattered bones there, right there that place from where I’m returning with my piece of the wall.

The first man to tour my body had magician lips flavored like wild fruit. He burned my hair with five oils and incantations that sounded like bells. His potions burned all night under my bed. The next day the albino child born before the harvest tossed them into the river with his eyes closed.  He didn’t want to see the sudden flight of vultures. In the meantime, my mother told me what White Fang didn’t know about the snow, and the memory of the sea became a mirage under the bedsheet.

Ghost I love the tenuous lines of your sex, your cluster  of forgotten aromas your ghost heart and the steps that nobody forces you to take

Senior Housing Time is bored with half of the almanac —it rains, it always rains— a remnant of sanity stored in the second to last suburb where I do my jogging. The other half of the days in the almanac are drowsy sleepy days where solemn statues come down from their pedestals to play canasta.

from Stories for a New Day Some poets took to the streets, invaded the parks and deceived doves with verses. They regrouped on city corners in silence, melancholia took over their hands, the profile of their mouths. But you’d never confuse them with the window display of a bookstore. A store from which the heart escapes as soon as it can. They’d faint for a little light, for the golden vein of granite, the marquee on which doves took refuge tired of so much ruse. They stayed on the streets until the new day became a roller shutter.

¿Sera así la vida? A mí nunca me han prometido nada. No hay nada roto en mí, ni caminó por la lagrima del día buscando refugio. No se me olvida reír cuando estoy solo y lloró como un loco por la hambruna por el color crepuscular de la tarde por el amargo perfume del suicida.

The most difficult thing for a photograph After spring there are no summers. The night watchman is a voyeuristic old owl on the roof of a cathedral. The most difficult thing for a photograph is to rub without setting on fire the beheaded hours of a lifetime. The rest is always simple.

She’s there she’s laying / in the shadows moistening               the sunrise / there’s a garden / inside her / where he’s dazzled / she blooms entirely for him / they tremble / and hold their tongues                         with the same rumor / exchange books papers promises / they dress kiss disjoin from one another / she walks into the darkness / perhaps oblivion / when he returns / she’s laying in the shadows / drenched she’s never left / she’s never leaving

Elections It is the first autumn of his eyes the first time he throws down walls that should never exist so tomorrow new eyes can hear the murmur of fading hearts through the autumn glass of leaves the color of blood, the color of iron, the color of gold.

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