Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Nature Slippery we are because of self-preservation sharp words in the waters of goddesses sinuosity of fishes gets tangled in our body something is condensed in our rusted presence something rises as a response to sound is almost erased when it upsurges but here we are wearing the perfect disguise.

Ash and Dust - To the Westboro Baptist Church Their tongues are hurting me. We levitate at dawn and return to the ground at night. Dirt and silk. Silk lasts three generations, dirt is forever. My bones burn under my skin, but my flesh is asleep, like a rosebud, a house to live up to the standards of the gods. —I didn’t come here to be illumined. —I saw fanaticism sheltering them in a blizzard of prayers.   Their mother is a cow. Look at the cow, your second mother! Isn’t it a delight to gaze inside a mirror? Ash and dust. It could happen anywhere. Hill is not the same as jungle, or wild the same as mind. Your shadows cuddle on horizontal time to extol calamity. Marble and horoscope, a sign for your empty mouths. Is this where you consult the future, the transformation of the children, the hidden flower of sin?

To the Westboro Baptist Church You come to buy poverty in Orlando? Who makes a home in dignity’s house, luxury or filth? Notice: the cow, pushing through the thicket of the immaculate. Everyone prays in the temple, but you pray to the elements of your body while walking burdensome paths, and crossing dust storms, surrounded by the smell of dry blood. You buy poverty with your eyes and pay with words.

Orlando 2016 - It rained lead It rained lead on night’s silence. Frogs jump from my mind. The crescent moon is dead, it drowned in blood the guiding star once sheltering Rumi while he dreamed his lover.

Llueve Plomo Llueve, llueve plomo en el silencio, saltan ranas de mi pensamiento, muere,  muere la luna creciente, se ahoga en sangre la estrella que alguna vez arropó a Rumi mientras soñaba con su amante.

You and I You, dressed in snow within my nocturnal pages, dancing. Full moon in the black lagoon. I, vortex of shadows curled up on your white lap, beating. Alabaster coal seam. You, pupil of mourning in the white lead of my eyes, liquefying. Obsidian teardrop in the sand. I, quiet lotus in the darkness of your sorrow, opening. Night pearl petal.

Under the skin of an oak , in its emaciation, my heart is also naked, stripped of bark, it tests the white calligraphy of oblivion, cuts the veins of desire already in a drought. Under the dark skin, the driest light, I open the channels for your fast-flowing rivers, and follow the footsteps of your efflorescence through the paths of a soul no longer mine. I’ll orient myself to bird and sun so that my voice is warm and loud. I won’t reveal your names. I’ll write an empty                concave poem                    so you can pour into it the honey in your eyes. I’ll wait for your rain without moving. Immerse me in your calm waters. I’ve walked towards your high twilights like moss that decorates the forgotten crevices of a wall. Make me your hollow bowl of love, your nurser...

Discovery this house has windows to look in from without. . . the only freedom here is my confinement outside, night passes by with high heels… one is left hanging to oneself eyelids never collapse I move forward groping I bump into the furniture that time forgot, the door of the room we will enter without keys

Ella Ella siempre fue Eva y siempre busco a su otra Eva con la clarividencia húmeda de alcatraces. Nunca se arraigó a la lluvia, ni se acostumbró al vuelo de pájaros traicioneros. Pero perdió su memoria y se arrimó al interés personal de tetas secas que nunca la quisieron porque haber amado a Eva era pecado. ¿Ahora, que  está   sola y demente cuál será su destino?

Running Out of Time Dawn is burning, it illuminates the ruins of my heart, the wide vaulted corridor of my heart, the passageways of earth inside my heart, the marshy floor of the cavern of my heart. I look for my sinking body, a body already missing from my body. Is piety reborn from shock? The gate opened and it did not manage to move me, my feet have forgotten how to walk without the weight of fear. Weightlessness scares me and joy moistens my parched lips with silence .

the terror of flickering years in the capillaries   of my father’s eyes… forgiveness and dread

Immense Magnolia Petal I thought death was one more way of being and not the other side of stones I looked for the smile of my childhood under your face and found your mother’s mourning glove your words fell like marbles down the stairs of silence to the foot of my soul mummified by your gesture earth opened to swallowed dawn birds and a tide of fear covered you death settled in the pores of day and I, undaunted watchman, witnessed the disintegration of the universe

Black on Black This is the Panamanian nymph the one printing her shape on my retina for a second she leaves an homeopathic drop of luck in the waters of my trembling body

Dry Portrait of Frida Kahlo From eyebrow to jail bars I am crowned with a rail of thorns this vertebral column hell of skulls agonizes me                     this severed placenta slavery feeds me             the orphanage pushing my gut aborts and aborts me I am a motherless ghost my dry udders drip rusted curds punishment for a castrated uterus Oh how I limp in my portraits Every sterile night, I un-nurse the fetuses in the bones of my bed and my eyes bleed drops of mirrors that speak to me and the twisted breath of daily tragedy nails me and I am hidden in my Nana, I breastfeed shadows with the same loneliness that night pours inside me and I paint myself without looking

Meeting Up with Lorca Birds fled from me at four in the afternoon. Serene birds, slow birds fled from me leaving their wings in my breast at four in the afternoon.

Stain Glass Windows You undress as if you were opening a chest full of jewels the best thing is your shine little hues of a black cat torsos broaden on the white bed sheet we do not do circus acts something takes me to your bitter butterflies and I stay there I clean wing to wing the wind adheres to this victory I take off my clothes give you the gesture bestowed on all fruits we are not beast we are stain-glass windows and we let the light pass through

Bed and Mesa They were not paper boats on the bed, only books, stars above the sky of the —inverted— mattress 

Chess Because then I’m just a little boy, birth and death have always been the dance, the true meaning of the game is in life, the true meaning of life is in the game.

Enunciations In the swift days of my life, the feet of the beast described by Daniel in his Book, 500 years and they still failed to set iron and miry clay, but the sword with which they imposed the siege had plunged the homeland into misery. Not much ever happened, Amen! to business, the beautiful alliterations of brokerages. 170, 000 beheaded. Life in the country was commendable, anyone could carry a flag and brandish stories. Getting into the economic brutality of kings and Orthodox Jews took into account a healthy economy, at least that’s what the papers said, so life in the pipe-dream-country started at 6am with breakfast, take the kids to school, then keep your buttocks behind a desk, behind a wrench, behind a broom, behind oneself, to honor the hours that would allow the boss to have his piña colada anywhere he had a world. Now the auxiliary realm of greed broadcasted live strange numerals  as if panic co...