Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

The Balancing Pole I get tired of searching for a scene where my number flows of confusing stomach growls with cranes in mid-flight of lukewarm drinks and beer without foam tomatoes without flavor and another full moon that brings no sighs nor the memory of a cuddle. I get bored of not agreeing of bending my head to interrogate meridians. Meanwhile, my palm looks for the balancing pole, the breath.

Needless to Say Today, all is distant in the house of dead mirrors. Bitter will my memory be, tart the steps in this transparent home. I've learned not to die a natural death. That's why I no longer need to share my thoughts. I’m like the cracks of the house without verandas. I live riddled by irredeemable language, grow crackling, deafened by a filthy light.

Undertow Tanka Review is Open for Submissions.  Send 10 of your best modern Haiku and/or Tanka.  Art is also accepted, we tend to favor surreal paintings. Send your submissions to: undertowtanka@gmail.com

It’s Summer in the Heart of my Blizzard The rain that hangs on the coat rack is infinite and light, like old foreskin dripping its resentful flaccidity. It is the anonymous principle of time impregnated by stupid angels, a fury of orphans and forgetfulness that does not end end end Summer afternoons do not know how to get down on their knees. There is always a genital murmur in them and an obstinate propensity to sleep. Weight scale that balances the nostalgia of things, scissors of light for the umbilical cord of the stars. Summer is vihuela, rotating stars and vihuela. Siren Tamer, summer counts its exploits. It evokes cut nipples, conch shells, pupils, angelic and exquisite tortures. I, immersed in the depths of the ink, just listen, like one listens to an impertinent drunk.

Clown Suite If I learn to paint existence, if I keep a Bertold Brecht in my drawer, (Man is born in the Bertold Brecht of his shirt. Children's eyes and anxiety knock on his door) this gulp of Japanese rum would be just like a son of a bitch rose. But this small insatiable country of drunkenness promised us transience, Pedrito, almost like a back-lit photograph. It gave us many blank pages and some scribbles. It also peed in our socks. That's why I love clowns. For their contribution to the theory of horror, for their wide and happy shoes, and for the Bertold Brecht that redeems the usury of dwelling in this rough alphabet.

A Poet's Epilogue The sudden flight of a startled butterfly reminds me of the serious impertinence of approaching matters without breaking with anguish, without forgetting the leaven of wounds. to be a stone in the depth of the stone I'd rather be a cross in the depth of the cross

About Profiles Sharpened in the light, like a sunrise doctoring himself in water, I look at how you lean on the magnet of your own shadow, as if you were a dream clock in the sweaty age of the planet. You are a fire cloud for the dolphin's plumage, the scar that travels from the nerve track of insomnia to the sulfur eyelid of an unclaimed god. I am the man, the throbbing eye in harmony with my uproar. Incurable tenderness suffocates me with the hands of oblivion because I speak alone to the crowds of your name. I am inside the small cavity of your dust with no possibility of a return, I look at you with the wise inconstancy of vinegar. I am the man, the dream, the eye.

Written on the Breath of a Crystal My faith is pregnant with black hens. I advance toward water urgently hitting the aftermath of time. I'm the feeble god that scratches the weight of terror. Here the afternoon is an ulcer but I like it because it’s in the latitude of suckling knives which are the skin of the dream in which you name me. Look at how this love of wires and equinoxes digs sea and sea, shovel and word. I have a caterpillar and my Quevedian faith, fertile and hairy as peace in a prairie. This faith snores when it talks about your absence, when it caresses the teenage udder of vinegar at the foot of bravura. Light creaks while I sing to the feline heart of your number, and my pencil trickles to the bad meat of knowing who I am, the open window to the muscle of a scream. Clot, kiss and faith, long-lived water in absent lightning. Here my terrible and polymorphous heart loves you in the simple milk of explo...

Coffee With Underhill 12 30 2016 just read one of my poems on CLOUDSOUND , Reasons to post a photo of a dead child from Aleppo...

Cooing the Man that is Singing He sings like the secret of stale rags. Opens unexpected seed pods. Grows eyelids to relieve our poverty. I break the dream that drew me to his voice and leave through a window to another jail where I fast in labyrinths stripped of leaves by music, disfigured by foam. I write so as not to lick the floor. I compose homelands  with oxidized tongues  (landscapes  with closed doors & mud ankles), islands of guitars without strings. He sings like skies feed on watches to make our days believe our right ear is a boy soaking his memory in The River of Docile Waters. He calls out my name, my silences of squeaking doors, my butterfly scars.

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.