Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Cartography of Dreams 1. By the time you arrive I’ll possess night in my hands. It carries the sleeplessness of the rooftops in its peak, the distant humidity of the streets that lack your footsteps. I wear wings borrowed from tonight, and retain the warmth of its arms for when you come to sleep later. Come: Tonight, we dine on the moon! 2. Like winter born on one December afternoon, I felt the urge to journey all the way to silence and listen to a breath of lights. I dragged a heap of leaves towards me. They stopped before I swept them, already waiting for me. 3. It was leaving memories lying on the dark waters of sleep. It was as if your voice came from the side of my body, or the echo of your smile inside some other ear, those clear labyrinths open to voices. It was the dying perfume of rain, the distance pending caresses keep, the smiles that never crossed each other, and walking barefoot where the sun won...

Anatomy of Failure My mother never forgot the sky that illumined the square of my town. She talked about the gazebo in front train station, the aqueduct arches which brought the turbid sound of water in the mornings. The mist reached her thoughts, she listened to the young man's footsteps as he swept the square with his broom of mallows. The light coming through the window lit up her face. The bitterness of her empty hands hurts. No breath ever incited her hair. My mother is an abandoned house. My father was the one who lived inside.

breaking bones with bones, that's how you left ... you grope, embrace what is no more like when you walked

Farewell to Black Breaking bones  with bones that's how you left, like bird’s leave the colors of daylight. There are taupe black marks in the name you were given. But these things stay, mystery with its dim black shadow, your deep enthusiasm for sadness,                                the ebony black,                     deadly vertigo that overpowered you, like the tears I cry for myself. The soul comes out of you without recognizing sizes, figures. You grope, embrace what is not. Little by little life blew you upward, hit and hurt you, crashing what was already stopped, like before, like when you walked.

my father with two birthdays but a single life ... inherited tears from the heart darken his face

This is my real father Natural History of Debris My father had two birthdays, but a single life. He kept both papers with zeal, they witnessed his existence. His birth certificate had him registered on a different day than the one we celebrated. With one of those dates my tired father bribed death. My sister and I always asked him to tell us about his childhood. He preserved intact the hamlet, the village, his mother, his brothers. The wondering, menacing animals, the trees, imprecise like someone's dream plus, every leaf in his lineage, each fruit with the lukewarm temperature of its pulp. The river close to the house, the inexhaustible rancor. He disappeared on that shore at the age of six. He rose from the worm entrails of dawn and left without giving notice. The house was calm, a sleeping cow, his footsteps on the thin branches could hardly be heard. He would sleepwalk with his eyes sealed with wax. Grandmother ...

UNDERTOW TANKA REVIEW ISSUE 9 is up! Valle de la Luna by Remedios Varo 1950

Batman I put my hands where my gloves wanted, my face where my mask could reveal itself. My only feat, not to be true, to lie with the awareness that I am not telling the truth. I have used the word love as a scalpel, and then I have seen the greenish scar that remains in the beloved and in the lover, and the scar shines in these words, and in my gaze I stroke the fleshy, thin edges of the scar. Night passed, took my old statues, erased the bubbling silence of conspirators, heroes who lost their heroism at birth. The great veil of the tropic, like a body adrift, falls upon us. Falls with slow waves of insects, and heat is the obscene language that licks the bodies of the living and the dead. From the sea, the last birds return. From what face, could I pull my mask to test the fabric of my life, the great wrapping of what surrounds me? Night sinks into faces, the tropics spread their hot, damp blankets over my heart. A slow b...

You happen in time you cross, you leave, you rub the surface of death and distracted continue to where I do not know if you continue. It's you who crosses time as if death were a curtain, the one who uncovers the mirror as if it were a coca cola can. You drink and throw the empty can on the asphalt.

Ulysses Returns I cannot give them anymore of me. In my skeleton, my lunar atrocity, what shines is the scarce             bleeding the remains of my stars. The smallest and weakest point of my sentence is a vague movement             of water after the shipwreck, when everything has disappeared from the surface and the very rhythm of the sea acquires the release of certain absences. This verbal challenge, this uprooting of the soul, this hand to hand melee of night with the legend while darkness takes the form of trees, faces             delivered to the appearance of the kiss, even this time lets us hear the sea, the ancient moaning of the beaches like a humanity tolerated             by the dreams of their gods, the blow of t...

sleeping beauty ... even if you come tomorrow in your absence today                         I lost part of the kingdom

What do I have If I don’t have The Blues I sailed the sea in an unknown course via my hands where love dwelt, and had a kingdom. Where dripping stars on clean shoulders showed truth. One breeze left without a destination. Where a woman institutes a kiss, trees prostrate to winter. It isn't necessary to say, the heart without being a tear can darken the face . I leaned my elbows on the past, and without looking, your absence penetrated my chest to lick my heart. The air, a hand that scanned my forehead. My forehead, where the moon was an inscription, a voice sculpting its dustbin. It wasn't necessary to cloud loneliness with the dust of a dissolved kiss. It wasn't necessary to memorize the night in a tear. There are crayons in the form of time, water glasses where the evening floats in silence. There's a tree branch like the carved arm of abandonment. Winter hibernates inside my heart. I wait for t...

The poem, my poem, My Little Tyrant is up at NewVerse.News !

The Bare Facts What wave is it, that when it hits against the body makes the sailor on duty pay attention, and later say, it’s nothing , strolls around the room again, looks out of the window at the scattered lights of the street? What come-and-go is spends the body of its gait against the spotted hull covered with marine parasites? Do you hear the noise? Does the noise come from the corridor or does it come from your desire? (Some kind of noise that stumbles with the some kind of silence within you) Maybe they already turned on the reflector to ask for your help! Maybe it was that jealous woman who stalks you! But no, not yet, nobody walks down the hallway to your door, no one stumbles with the chair inside you, your hero costume spread on the chair, the same as your hero feelings, ready for when you spring into action. Resume the same discourse, begin the same conjecture, the classic flaw in the middle of the road, the Divine autom...

Time Lapse Photography I hear you come and go in my dreams and in cloudy camphor windows. I hear you when I hear other steps down the corridor, other voices that aren’t yours. I recognize your worn amaranth and feather hands, here, on the shore of your wasteland. We were to meet but you didn't show up. An ocean more powerful than night seized you in its hands like a scattered flower. Your photograph looks at me from where you are not, from where I do not know you, from where everything is a lie you leave your eyes to look at me. For reasons, I don’t seem to grasp you've gone on a trip, and it's like you've never been here, you’re just―so soon―one of those stories some old maid told me in the kitchen. The things that speak of you lie, your last face lied to me as I leaned over it, because it wasn’t you and I was embracing that which the infinite removed little by little.

My Little Tyrant You stopped to desire what you looked at, you stopped to invent what you looked at, but you were never at a standstill. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything. Donald Trump You stopped to desire what you looked at, you stopped to invent what you looked at, but you were never at a standstill. You understood the docks, the places where salt is a blind lady seated on your soul, where foam gnaws at the base of everything, with its small teeth resembling the quicksand of what is forgotten, the sites where old anchors and barges of oversize engines oxidize in droppings of seagulls and pelicans, the small white tumults where peace and movement intertwine their nets in the old-fashion-way of the sea, the landscapes that surrounded you without you knowing how far from your imagination, your most intimate arguments could travel. There is a sky f...

Infinita llanura cordillera helada, tumultuoso rio, navegación por el mar  de colores apagados o deslumbrantes desierto de oro y noche, litoral que alarga al horizonte hasta hacerlo parecer el horizonte, terminas tocándome aunque no tenga rostro.

Mirando a un gorrión Racimos trémulos de desnudas soledades, estéril desierto de pensativa escarcha, mi vida sin recuerdos. El otoño no quiere mirar tus ojos, estás muerto, brisa triste entre narcisos pálidos.