Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Another poem up at:  Chachalaca Review .  You will have to download the PDF file to read the issue.  Sergio A. Ortiz

I have a poem up at: Whispers and the Roar The Shame and Fear We Sow  Sergio A. Ortiz

Si Ulises muriese un día martes cualquiera Es el calibre del agujero que deja, la intensidad de la herida, la cuenta bancaria (dentro de mi corazón) donde guardo las páginas agotadas de mi vida. Es imaginarme lo inimaginable, la lánguida calle lateral, mi Ulises sin su Dublín. Es el clima tácito al que nos referimos cuando no hay campeón, ni comodidad alguna dentro de mi bungaló. Sé qué textura tus muslos se ven obligados a rendir en mis sueños. Soy quien no quiere clausura,  que tu voz  no desvanezca sobre  un horizonte separado al mío.

If Ulysses should Die on a Tuesday It’s the caliber of the hole, the intensity of the wound, the hideout (inside my heart) where I bank the depleted pages of my life. It’s imagining the unimaginable, the languorous side street, my Ulysses without his Dublin. It’s the tacit climate we refer to when there is no champion, no comfort inside my bungalow. I know what texture your thighs are compelled to surrender to my dreams. I’m the one who doesn't want closure with no vested interest in hearing your voice fade into a separate horizon.

Kala Namak / Black Salt You fall beyond your sap / abated remembrance / vile fear of tears // In you my heart / is a circle of fire / black salt on the river banks of your Himalaya // And I am shipwrecked / confused tangle of dreams that mocks the cacophonous memory of the water.

Kala Namak / Sal Negra Caes más allá de tu savia / recuerdo apagado / vil miedo de lágrimas //  En ti mi corazón es un círculo de fuego / sal negra a las orillas del río de tu Himalaya // Y soy naufragio de sombras / enredo de sueños que se burlan de la memoria cacofónica del agua.

Walking on the Limbo of Lost Words the lighthouse of the indefinite trafficking voices of absence, skeleton walls smuggle freedom. My country: a poem under an illegal shade. A sun full of cameras rides my skin like ghosts who claim what is rightfully theirs. I lead the echoes of my flight to a heart masked as theatrical delirium, my wrinkled memoir   dancing to Etta Jones’s  Don’t go to Strangers . I touch your lips with my revolutionary blood and leave my confession   on your cinnamon eyes.

Caminé sobre el limbo de la palabra perdida Soy faro de lo indefinido  y traficó voces de ausencias, murallas de esqueletos que contrabandean libertades. Mi tierra es el poema que da sombra a ilegales pensamientos. Soles llenos de cámaras transitan sobre mi piel como fantasmas reclamando lo suyo con evidencia. Caminé al frente de los ecos de mi huida hacia un corazón disfrazado de delirios teatrales con mi historia arrugada. Recorrí tu cuerpo con mi sangre revolucionaria dejando huellas profundas sobre tus ojos color canela.

With No Punctuation You insist on dealing with my silence making sure no one rises to my defense Between the lips of my vulva scented flowers open locks to holes that listen to what belongs to me No endless distances no monsters nothing of the low note minced by my voice To be able to sing with amazement to sing with no punctuation or alarm

I won a poetry contest. Yes, I'm the winner of the Spring/Summer 2016 contest at  The Song Is...  I had already been nominated for the 2016  Best of the Net award  by this same journal. The poetry judge was  Catfish McDaris ,   Lynne S. Viti judged prose. "Requiem for Mercedes Sosa" was the winning poem.  Sergio A. Ortiz

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.