Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

I say I am Pessoa or Pound A faceless woman sings while standing on my soul. A drowned siren begs for alms. A child, a beaten dog beneath the hail,* cries. An unforgiving hand tortures my wrist, e isso me leva à morte.* *Canto LXXXI BY EZRA POUND *And it takes me to death

mi pasado escombros, fragmentos, delta que me hizo seguir hacia adelante… yo fluyó en más de una dirección  

Love bit me with its sweetest tooth They are three They are together Present in one The Black                    The White                                           The Red: The Moon for my concubine this slow dawn that lengthens with the rooster's crow this crescent moon whose sharp tip has begun to tear the dark love bit me with its sweetest tooth

Look at my mouth full of vitriol, and my throat full of poison hemlock look at the partridge dying in Rimbaud’s thyme desert look at the trees nerves tightened by the light. This is what I see in the smooth April hour, this is what I see in the chapel mirror.

NEW GUIDELINES FOR UNDERTOW TANKA REVIEW 1.      We will only be publishing 5 to 25 tanka, so send the very best. We're going to be very selective. 2.      Please don’t send traditional 31 syllable tanka, they will be rejected. 3.      We are looking for avant-garde, surreal, light-verse tanka poems. 4.      We are also open to haiku, the same amount will be selected for publication, we prefer modern haiku, nothing traditional. 5.      We are open to submissions year round, but will publish poems online three times a year starting May, 2016. Submission Windows From Oct. 15 to Dec. 15 for Jan. issue From Feb. 15 to Apr. 15 for May issue From Jun. 15 to Aug. 15 for Sep. issue ANNOUNCEMENT:  We have a new assistant editor, Rajan Garg  rajangarg.thapar@gmail.com Sergio Ortiz, editor  undertowtanka@gmail.com

Why is there so much life Maybe tonight is not a night, it must be a dreadful sun, or something else, anything. I don’t know.  There’s a lack of words, a lack of candor, a lack of poetry when blood cries and cries. There’s something tearing my skin, a blind fury runs through my veins, Cerberus of my soul. Let me go beyond your smile! I could be so happy tonight! There are lingering dreams, and so many books, and so many lights, and such few years.  Why not? Death is far away. It’s not looking at me. So much life, dear God. Why is there so much life?

I'm wiped out  by gales and rain  like an elegy  on an alley wall  ... yet I dare to love

Dark waters I swim in my waters wait for language to give me form think about the wind coming to caress my face a stranger to myself, I've walk all night in the rain I say:   you been given a silence full of forms and visions and I run like a heartbroken panther through the jungle

This compulsion to become an ageless angel, without a death in which to enjoy myself, without pity for my name or for my weeping bones. Who does not possess a fire, a death, a fear, something horrible, even when it has feathers even when it carries a smile Sinister delirium to love a shadow. A shadow does not die. My love only embraces what flows like lava from hell: a silent loggia, ghosts with sweet erections, priests made of froth, and above everything else angels beautiful angels like blades that rise at night to devastate hope.

Escombros El mundo está distorsionado y existen cerraduras por todas partes pero no llaves y existe la angustia pero no el llanto. ¿Qué hare conmigo mismo? Ocultarme en el lenguaje ahí no tengo miedo ahí está mi cara de ausente ahí está mi abrigo de cría de foca.

The devil that died in his blue jeans sings steeped in the drunkenness of the sun. There’s a blue jean in his song, a white horse, and a red heart tattooed on his chest. Despite the green fog on his lips and the cold gray in his eyes his voice corrodes the distance that lies between thirst and the hand looking for the glass. He sings.

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.