Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

The Drowned I want to clarify that it was not in a river but in the very ground in front of President's Park where I drowned. The only river I have in my memory is a shudder where small things sink but never disappear. Sometimes, I sink before the river passes. And my request for help is always late.

                          Free Verse and Other Ways of Cursing Imagine that when the time comes the seconds of those hours’ return with the misfortune of gravestone lethargy & that the stubborn hands of that unworthy artifact get stuck & again our eyes return to the offensive insistence of that presidential election. Imagine the clock of death, endless centuries, seasons, geological ages, species, mutation of these species, other galaxies, worlds, abysses, impossible universes, everything that could, in short, have a name, wailing. Imagine that for us it was always that moment, forever the moment of racist bigotry and misogyny …

A Wolf                       I know there’s something better down the road.                       We need to find a place where we are safe.                                 Praise Song for the Day, Elizabeth Alexander passed by my eyes leaving his footsteps in my veins. Stealthy and hungry, he stacked the city scrutinizing the future. Today the shutters are closed because in this poem there's a wolf coming to get me. Even when I try to be quiet he jumps the words, a memory rips out a howl, and devours me.

The Damage Something we were withholding made us weak Until we found out that it was ourselves The Gift Outright, Robert Frost The results came in, maybe life gave us too much at the beginning and we kept looking for a path that maintained enough of a balance so as not to become this pestilent air. Maybe life did not belong to us anymore, maybe the things we believed in were part of the damage, part of that petulant wind knocking down the walls of our nation. And if we had known the outcome would we have put our hands together or looked elsewhere, renounced everything to stay still so as not to cross the days that agonize? This is so immense it doesn't fit into tears. We heard the results later. There’s no greater nostalgia than that of the future.

Let’s go get a Drink May all the gods examine your body with their kisses making your love a moan heard throughout the Greek islands. May they kiss you in raving. What is the use of waste if he doesn't love you? How can you enjoy good fortune if his eyes do not look at you, and your afternoons do not ignite with his aroma? Come, my Catullus friend, do not suffer when he does not look at you. I understand your misfortune. The flower of my delights is resting in the arms of Zeus.

The Wound of Hate Your smile hurts, so does your voice and the sea in which you bathe, your ashes and your body. The mourning seed I feed with fire that is my currency, this long, amorous nightmare. And, how to tell,                                     tell you that I have closed eyes if at the end of eyes, I keep the almond and the broken  election. How do I keep quiet when there are halved doves on fields and fields of blood.

look! the ruins of a broken castle ... the throne emanating splendor no longer there

decanter in hand  a first hour sigh conceding  defeat ... oh! the moon, you'll search but never find it

The Mind is its own Place We all yearn to go back to the edge of that fire and kick that fucking election, the religion, the race of an entire nation in the balls so everything breathes at the rhythm of our lungs . But none of that worries us now. We worry about the detonator of tomorrows, the almond beyond the shell, the shiny nugget, and the damn heat even when we know it’s November and an eerie cold is fast approaching. We want pleasure to surround our waist.  It can be you, or anybody else who embraces my body already lightened from the burden of the world. Yes, you can take me to the sea inside where there is only the sound of blood running like a flowered beast. And so, I go back to my room tell myself,             fuck it, it’s better this way!  

White, US citizens just elected a clown to the presidency. They deserve every insult they get every time the CLOWN embarrasses them internationally! Tag people Add what you're doing or how you're feeling Tag a location Can

Contradanza Tonight, when you cut the fabric & I cut the dry trunk, I’ll tell myself that we were made to find ourselves under the bower of poplars. We would both have our eyes clean to look at the good of what remains in us. I want you to shower for my wet hands, & then in the sleeplessness, know me again contingent and fleeting. Whenever I approached you, I learned that a man's body is also a way of understanding the earth. In you I always walked crossing mountains, tasting the exact flavors of your fruit. Let's walk around the city buy beer & tacos. Or, get in my jeep & be my flower of smoke. Dance like an agonizing deer to preserve the memory. of your footsteps in the world.

To Anguish Peach acid. A scalded peach tongue. A spicy and hot and bitter and spicy peach in scalded tongue. Oh, sadness. Ah! Studied smile, lightened, rehearsed in the mirror of what I do not say. Ah! Stupid breathlessness, oppressed, spelled, innocuous poison. Ulceration. What a slow machine, what clumsy, slow machine is the heart of the one that suffers.

Instead of Smiles We all have specks of hate gilding blue our day in our bed of magnolias, flecks macerating juices, framing cheerful blooms, its leisurely fruit. What seas, what tempestuous depths beat against our chest? Instead of smiles, they open claws and fangs. The sea raises and its roar stirs celibate waters with hatred. Behind it comes another wave, another ferment, another secret giving you more of its hate. The studded tower rises like an emergency, it is a monument of unbridled fury. When we feel the smell of burning flesh there's such a deep cry, a mask on fire ignites our words.  We all have a lethal spear in our tongue, because where there was warm blood, explosive blooming bones, bones without woodworms, doggedly, hate grows, its tongue scalded by the atrocious vinegar of meaninglessness. And our hearts, made to house love, thrash our muscles, pump the desperate juices of anger. When our ...

Hombre de los ojos diminutos Si no fuera por la arcilla cocida, las cuentas bancarias vacías, y el temor a mantener a un vividor, me habría hecho pequeño, insulsa ráfaga cansada de aire erguido, gran soplo arrastrado por una cara bonita Barbie Super Star en el bulevar de los sueños rotos

Evening Star gales of thought drag out a tumult of words I turn away  from the uproar  seeking stillness sky  tinted with saffron  a rainbow  taks me back to childhood

go ahead  take to flying, become a bee  tomorrow  you'll be too old to soar peck the hyacinth in my garden

A Ditch on the Road to your Body Let every month be November with electric euphoria. May tenderness be born from one of your bones, and James Dean's laughter go up in flames, may you show me the scars you no longer remember. I touched your arm, a ditch on the road to your body. I touched the open scar. You laughed and closed your eyes,  your laughter told me that you were naked between wild horses. Back then, you didn't hear me praise your sense of emptiness, that sweetish scratch on the skin of your back. I wanted to wrap myself around your red-blooded-James-Dean jacket and lick the layers of oil, dirt, dust, adhering to your heart. Some speechless voice told me, when I supported my head on your hip, or when you rode me and our testicles  rubbed together, collided, folded into each other  and I thought we sailed a path of wires, threads, to weightlessness,  that the scar was still fresh in your memory. I wanted to...

painting by Christian Schloe who wants  to bring down the door  to my garden  of buried silence, paid for  with shame and lost pride

The Salt of my Tongue  I've known you since  then,  stagnant water, since  you left me.  Now, I'll have to seek refuge in other eyes. I am the valve  you wear down, the man you loath.   Your body and my body speak the love they occupy, the love that restores us unabridged to what we are. We travel with open skin, without calm, blindly pointing the way to the rotten, the ones who still long to live. I always dig you out, my bone, my ghost under the pillow, among men kissing under poplars, and women who need to penetrate each other (a hopeless cause)  to feel happy. I'll be there, chased, a bat flapping in each of my wrists, then you'll know we'll never be so hidden we forget each other.