Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Sin Puntuación Insistes en lidiar mi silencio     procurando nadie surja en mi defensa Entre los labios de mi vulva perfumadas flores abren cerraduras orificios que escuchan lo propio lo mío Nada de distancias  interminables nada de monstruos   nada de la nota baja entrecortada finamente  por mi voz resquebrajada Poder cantar poder cantar con asombro poder cantar sin puntuación ni alarma 

About Reparations to Eros         there will be no reparations May my silence never walk on the dormant back of a heron. May it leave a homeopathic drop of luck on the waters of my trembling body. May my skin bear no resemblance to the unshakable epidermis of a frozen pachyderm.   I confess,  I'm in debt to a slave driver's arms. I tasted his fruit,  and I couldn't distinguish the sour from the sweet.

Sobre eso de la deuda Que mi silencio nunca camine sobre la espalda dormida de una garza. Que deje una gota homeopática de suerte en las aguas temblorosas de mi cuerpo. Lo confieso, estoy endeudado a brazos esclavistas. Confieso, que probé la fruta mas no distinguí lo agrio de lo dulce.

Paying for a Whim ...at the age of sixty-five Besieged between my buttocks the foam you break from the Pacific my open sea prendre plaisir selfish giant of my tale and awe enter without haste without Customs as if you didn't sneak    into this banquet paint my gray hairs purple patina  fill me with wrath malformed ravens via crucis cemetery breath demanding you stay glued until I finish

Upended Far from all forms of charity, I am the prophet, the retired apostle of faith in myself.  My friends‒escape artists, foreshadowers of verses, sunk in the quicksands  of language. They believe in the melodies I babble exalting legendray elephant graveyards & mystic monsoons. We witness the paradigms of a century fall while celebrating a Wimbledon match, a joy much greater than a revolution.

my taste, that he take everything from me ... bamboozle me on the cross of oblivion

Marathon Runner A marathoner with black eyes gazelles his girth forward. My eyes have an owner. In his face, a man with many beds, one who follows the nape of old gay swans like a male about to thrust. My taste, that he take everything from me, when Jews grind their matzo. Marathan man, bamboozle me  on the cross  of oblivion.

The Shame and Fear We Sow It’s no longer Build the Wall or Lock Her Up , now it’s Shoot the Bitch. and Hang the Nigger. Outbursts, newsworthy metaphors, one more fire under Nowhere Bridge, a contemptible distraction to my support of The Water Protectors? I’m done listening to loudspeakers announce our descent into hell.  It’s a show of strength to be a powerful woman, a successful black man. Why run through the corridors of the West Wing cherry-picking slogans for a lynch mob?

In the Clear Age of Water The work of this day consists in carrying a bag laden with rain from here to there. Once done,  it's lift the bag  with our tired eyes, bury it in the lake of indifference where sad conversations rot. Let’s stamp life with graffiti. After all, we are just the so-and-so's, the whatshisname's, the Tom Dick or Harry's of life and rain is nothing more than corrected, repetitive poetry, a new pair of shoes wanting to be so joyful happiness tires and refuses to do any overtime.

This has been an incredible year for me.  After spending four years writing, editing, and publishing Tanka, I returned to longer poems.  Much to my surprise, I was nominated for a Best of the Net award for the poem, Requiem for Mercedes Sosa . I started working on my first full poetry collection, Elephant Graveyard, and it's almost finished. I tried my hand at writing political poems, and over the last two weeks 10 of those poems have been accepted for publication.  My life couldn't get any better.  I want to thank you all for reading my poems. Let's break a leg together. Sergio

Alexzander Hamilton’s Broadway Dispute What deepening twilight—scum floating atop of the waters To the States, by Walt Whitman bien-pensants with fingers in your ears and fears unheard ... our founding fathers are unapologetic

As If from Nowhere Miguel Angel's sentences  have the shuddering of what is about to fade. Memories haunt him  like a baggage car  that does not quite fit. But let's talk about his voice, somewhat faded by the years. As if words were spying on him . As if there were no throat only a guitar of spoils among the stones and snow of New York City. He talks about his mother who is in her 90's and lives on the beaches of Rincon . Talks about the wife and grandchild he’s left behind. Suddenly, death is him and this is the ferry's last stop. Miguel Angel from nowhere, the world becomes numerous, but the cold keeps its stories.

Los momentos desvanecen sin saber porque Tu y yo dentro de un espacio ordinario debajo de una pila de hojas muertas El silencio taconea      a través del desorden pescado blanco             cruciforme a la deriva            en un paño de té         finalmente no tengo bálsamo para decir lo que las cosas aparentan Sin ti aquí me olvido de no querer tocar bronceados de peón agrícola en flor tatuajes en la clavícula flequillos oscuro a través de ojos extraños Sin ti en casa este amor es un tirón estirado hasta que se afloja aunque soy el punto quieto alrededor del cual tú marcas tu travesía Nunca es sólo tú el que vagabundea

The Sand and the Forgotten on this Side of the Border Fuck A Wall  America should build a big mirror Anonymous Protester We hope the dead reconcile with the dead, so they may achieve a position among their peers. May the student and the lady in a Stetson make the same mistakes. And the victim cross the street side by side his eternal executioner without recognizing him. Shadows or ghosts, both shall pass. On the sidelines, the feast of the living is still happening. Listen to the slight music of the mountains of exile in silence and don't look back. This, and not another, is our story: The time contemplated in the fissures of the sand, The slow ripening of deserts without limit.

He’s NOT my President I eat breakfast, think of the mother of Mondays in front of a broken well, clean dry leaves  off a plank  on top of the bed calm as the man who washes gold dust  in the privacy of his house. The wind reaches into the pockets of night, sails through plazas I can't recognize, deserted avenues I've never seen, stores where promises are paid with promises. It rests in the fury of keys, draws two lines of fire on the counter of a bar near my house, builds nationalist utopias & banishes women in burkas, in front of the white house by the lake. My job is my father's old job. I care for the salt, measure the crystals, frighten away white precipice birds.

A Thousand Darknesses In memory of Holocaust Victims and Celan We went to Mirabeau Bridge and paid your promise. The hours passed on the Seine, our lives increasingly smaller  grew confident a suicide chose  the side of the Tower where nothing ends up falling. We threw our coins in the water.

Precipice birds arrived with the sea's pendulum engraved on the feathers covering their heads. Reptiles followed their flight  from below  with deadly splendor. The birds delayed the snow to visit my house and gifted me the crumbs of a closed political paradise whitewashed with decrepit lies.

The Outlaws of Canon two men coming down  on all fours from their presidential palace, licking hands and legs, dying, poisoned by their own decision             and will. Not one of them rests and as a pack they chase             exotic reindeer screaming, fire in the News Room. Depraved, language perverts howling in the chicken coop of news anchors. Ha, their fame demands a change in personnel. Yes, outlaws of canon, with accumulated miles of prostitution and falsehood, fleeing their brothers, forgetting their parents exile. No, we will not forget our stay in this country. Nor the years of delay we gave up to let them prosper. Listen to how frozen hurricanes emerge from the dew!

At the Margin of Things These days behind what I write there's always rain. Music opens a sphere and unheard of ghosts come and go as they please singing, dance me to the end of love, but I can’t. The insults, the injuries made at the margins   are unsafe halfway houses of terror, where naked orange clowns  grow balls,  and file their nails . Gravity ceases under their wet boots and it rains all over my margins.