Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Weeping at the many funerals of my birth 1. I’ve left my body next to the dawn and I've sung the sadness of what is born. 2. now then: who will stop digging their hands in search of the child’s tribute? the cold will pay. the wind will pay. the rain will pay. thunder will pay… 3. for a short-lived minute of life for a minute of viewing the brain for little flowers dancing like words in the mouth of a mute man 4. he’s afraid to undress in the paradise of his memory he’s ignorant of the fierce destiny of his visions 5. illumined memory, where the shadow of what I wait for roams. it’s a lie he will not return. it’s a lie he will return. 6. there’s a weak wind full of bent faces, cut-outs of things I want to love 7. now             at this innocent hour me and the one I was sit on the doorstep of my gaze 8. afraid of being two on my way to the mirro...

One night I told you   whoever doesn’t keep a secret will never have pity. It was raining, but you opened the window. The storm was blue in the forest. The red stain coming from the roses spread throughout the gardens and the world was the creation of another generation like the time we were in an abandoned house lighting an old fire.

When we lose a friend Everything I was with you was necessary, what I am with you on the right side of pain is necessary. To know, and later keep on living, to see how much deaf darkness besieged you, and later find the broken-hearted air you left for dead.

Ezdras Parra was a transgender Venezuelan poet, fiction writer, essayist, editor, literary and movie critic. She published:   Este suelo secreto (1995), obtaining the poetry prize;    II Bienal Mariano Picón Salas.  y Antigüedad del frío (2000).  In fiction writing she published:  El insurgente (1967), Por el mar de las Antillas (1968) y Juego limpio (1968). You who are never quenched nor know who you are nor exist for a certainty you who can be many when dreaming you are right or thinking you must conquer that nothingness Tú que jamás te sacias ni sabes quién eres ni existes para la certidumbre que puedes ser muchos soñando que estás en lo cierto o pensando que debes conquistar ese nada. the poem Que -That That this place does not leave me, this garden, this spread out sheet used to engross the horses circle the immobile panorama    its smell distributed over pastoral objects and w...

Cain and Abel Juan Carlos Bautista While on my back                         he hardly made a sound but his beast riotously                         ate my ass. A silent man in times of war. I said this hungry man is my brother. And I opened up delicately                         like a hyacinth opens when an ox steps on it. I fed him water from my mouth, hands that were handkerchiefs to his forehead, my back like a piece of bread, and eyes that knew when to close. I said this man is my brother   while he was on top of me and I love him because we’re equally poor and we’re equally hungry. — Tal...

I won’t return  to the places where my wailing  breathed…  the child with the sweet young eyes  still travels with me

He didn’t say a word , he hauled his body over like a question, an unanswerable question, a leaf whose branch does not exist, a world whose sky does not exist. An endless rubbing, a fleeting gaze among the shadows, enough for bodies to be torn in two, eager to receive another dreamful body; half and half, dream and dream, skin and skin. Equal bodies, equal love, equal desire. Because desire is nothing but a question with no answer.

Sailors are the wings of love , The mirrors of love, The sea is their escort And their eyes are blond the same as love Which is as blond as love itself, just like his eyes. The vivacious happiness poured into our veins   Is also blond, Identical to the skin beginning to appear: Don’t let them leave because they smile Like freedom, Blinding upright light over the sea. Yes, a sailor is the sea, An amorous blond sea whose presence is a chant. I don’t want the concrete city, I desire only the sea swarming with water, Aimless vessel, Aimless body drowning in his blond.

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.