Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Narcissus’s Death Narcissus, Narcissus, the antlers of the murdered deer, fish, flames, flutes, are nibbled fingers. Lips are paths, sad flames, waves biting hips. Cold fish of the green, air in the mirrors without stretch marks, flocks of pigeons hidden in the dead throat, daughter of the arrow and the swan, seashell in the wave, uninterested cloud, foam hangs from the eyes, not offered marmoreal drop, a heron needs to wander! You hear fruit like screams in the snow, the secret in converted geraniums. Silk whiteness ascending spilled lips, open oblivion to the islands. Swords and eyelashes surrender to the dream, render the mirror on an impure seashore. Moist lips not on the seashell search for the straight thread. They are slaves of dry contours. The air bites the litmus that changes its sound into blond litmus of salt lime. If he goes through the mirror, the waters that stir the ears boil. If he leans on its edge or on his forehead the centurio...

Listen Without Prejudice It's December and it snows with the voice of George Michael. The apartment is a giant bed where the hard parts of love are covered. The mattress in my bedroom is gutted. There are nights overflowing in the ashtrays. He clasps his hands and a bird appears on the wall. Look at this elephant walk , she laughs, and repeats. He rolls another cigarette and changes channels. God is spoken. Death. Beneath the sheets there are attentive knees. He reads stories with his blood on fire. She falls asleep just before she cries. It's the voice of George Michael snowing. Clothes hang in the soul of the two. They look at each other as if they've just returned from a party. Time does not understand these things. For him they're all animals. They all have lessons to learn. On a Friday, there’s a crack in the air. The back door is wide open. George Michael lays silent in a drawer. That's how i...

I have eyes to see something of who I am tonight, and ears to listen too. I'm in my room with my dreams. Behind every shadow there are traces of me, on the chair, at my feet, in bed, watching. They take my name, and come out of the mirrors. It's been a while since we met up with each other. I'll give you my body. I’ll gather myself, open my eyes and sprinkle shadows with my darkness tonight. My heart on the bed sheet beating.

I am my body and my body is sad and tired. I'm going to sleep for a week, a month, a year, so be silent. That when I open my eyes children are grown and the universe smiles. I want to stop stepping on the bare feet of the cold. Let me have all the heat, the sheets, the blankets, papers and memories. Close all the doors so that my loneliness does not leave. I want to sleep for a month, a year, just sleep. And if I sleep talk, do not pay attention. I want you to pretend that I am buried until the day of the Resurrection. I want to sleep until next year, nothing more.

Dozens, the new Breath & Shadow Anthology is now online at Amazon. Breath & Shadow is a quarterly journal of disability culture and literature. A project of AbilityMaine, Breath & Shadow was the first online literary journal with a focus on disability. They are now open for both fiction and poetry submissions .

Goodbye 1.       Of Illusion You wrote: D  e  s  i  r  e on the tablet of my heart I walked for days and days dazzled      aromatized      and sad. 2.       Of Night In the loving night, I grieve. I pity his secret, my secret, I interrogate him in my blood for a long, long time. He doesn’t answer and does like my mother, who closes her eyes without listening to me. 3.       Of Goodbyes It's not to be said. It comes to our eyes, to our hands.  Trembles, resists. You say you'll wait―you wait― from then until … . And know goodbyes are useless and sad.

Of Goodbyes It's not to be said. It comes to our eyes, to our hands, trembles, resists. You say you'll wait―you wait― from then until … And know goodbyes are useless and sad.

Of the Night In the loving night I grieve. I pity her secret, my secret, I interrogate her in my blood for a long, long time. She doesn't answer and does like my mother, who closes her eyes without listening to me.

Of Illusion You wrote: D  e  s  i  r  e  in the table of my heart I walked  for days and days  crazy      aromatized      and sad

Wanting to cry,      almost crying. I bring my youth in my arms, the cloth of my blood on which my heart rests hopeful. Weak, convalescent, strange, deaf to my voice, marked by fright, I arrive to my youth like the leaves the wind spins around trees. I knew very few words to define the strange events of my ravages. Shadow and wound, lust, thirst and tears. I come to my youth and I spill myself on it like angry liquor, the blood of a beautiful horse, water on the thighs of a woman with tight thighs. My youth does not sustain me, I do not know what I'm saying and what I don't speak. I'm in my tenderness like sleep is in eyelids. If I walk, I do so like the blind learning from each step I take. Abandon me here. I'm glad. I expect something. I do not need more than a worthy dream, and incessant failure.

Our Father who Art in Heaven Let's talk about Prince Cancer, Lord of the Lungs, Male of the Prostate, having fun throwing darts to the smooth ovaries, and wilted vaginas, multitudinous Groins My father has the most beautiful cancer ganglion at the root of his neck, under the clavicle, tubercle of the good of God, light bulb of virtuous death. I send all the suns of the world to la chingada. The Lord Cancer, Lord Pendejo, is just an instrument in the dark hands of the sweet VIP's that make up life. In the four drawers of the wooden filing cabinet I keep dear names, clothes of familiar ghosts, words that wander around and my successive skins. I also keep the faces of beloved women, their loved and alone eyes, the chaste kiss of coitus. May good find the shadow of a heavenly tree.

A Hail Mary We buried you yesterday. Yesterday we buried you. We poured land over you yesterday. You were in the ground yesterday. You are surrounded by dirt since yesterday. Above and below and to the sides for your feet and on your head. We put you inside the earth, covered you with dirt yesterday. Yesterday we buried you. Generous Mother of the dead, mother earth, mother vagina of the cold, arms of weather, lap of wind, nest of night, mother of death, pick him up, strip him, take him, save him, finish him. As the children grow up, with all the dead, little by little, you finish. I've been watching you at night above the marble, inside your little house. One day with no eyes, no nose, no ears, another day without a throat, the skin on your forehead cracking, sinking, obscuring the wheat field of your reeds. All of you submerged in moisture and gases, making your waste, (your disorder, your soul) e...