Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Badlands Here we are orphans of the scientific cry strangled by the fury of acid rain. The appearance of a presidential tweet is not rapture, or change. It is an absent body. None of us surrenders that easily to an absent body. A tree frog arrives to the shade of a hollow log with not even a rumble.

Muchacho Isleño   Tenía 17. Piel cobre intenso al frente del espejo de mi abuela: chacho isleño de pelo negro. Ventana abierta, quise aspirar el aroma a sofrito. Se me cayó la toalla. Clavé las yemas de los dedos en el espejo. Para aquel entonces susurraba que no quería ser hombre. Incluso sentí que estos incipientes pechos crecían muy pesados. Pues doblaban mi espalda con todas sus demandas.

The poem is up at Two Words For If It Rains and Night Arrives If it rains and night arrives in Paris, she will sit alone at the threshold of Brahma’s  temple to watch you leave without asking you to comfort her. If it rains and night arrives in Tehran, she will think about Sita repudiated by Rama, and ask you why men  do these things knowing in advance the end. If it rains and night arrives in New York City, she will drop every piece of the night sky and walk,  free and alone, towards the dawn  she glimpsed  when you left her

Nosotros los Chicos Invisibles hemos estado gestando en este arenal durante meses. Buscando fuerzas-pilares, manteniendo habilidades-felinas. Vagamos lentamente hacia amistades y amantes; silenciosos, atados, zurcidos y esperando. En esta ciudad, este Neverland, solo nos tenemos un al otro. Y todos fuimos traídos a esta playa por un flautista de Hamelin distinto. Nos hicimos muchachos calmando infancias mortinatas. Flexionando músculos y observando nuestros cuerpos comprimirse en formas que abiertamente deseábamos, que secretamente objetábamos.

What is Torture Danang 1965 when the eyes of the dead rise among weeds! What is amber when transparency clouds my blood with red! What is an aura when in the distance the jungle tightens the rain and loads the legs of mutilated bodies on my back! If war had not come to me like a clandestine night of a capture, I would be naked and asleep on the sands of China Beach.

PIN QUARTERLY JOURNAL, a vast garden of literary comeliness just published two of my poems.  This journal is based in Nigeria. The poems are in the section: ACROSS THE OCEANS WITCHING THE WORLD By Sergio A. Ortiz Real loneliness is like a window from wherein you cannot hear a thing. My loneliness is the tracks at a train crossing, a damnation of gunfire and impact. In silence my name: the instant at which the gods finally forget to call. I keep thinking, sing to yourself and survive. Expand to infinity like a deaf man expands his voice in a dream. ABYSSES By Sergio A. Ortiz I live between two abysses The staggering patience of him who walks far too long to lean on the rail of a footbridge ―my only afternoon ceremony― to watch the water roll by And the enormous impatience of him who wants to reach the end zone at all costs but only sees the size of his insomnia and jumps off the bridge into y...

A Coyote Lurks Be vigilant of the coyote prowling your words. He'll butcher the jacaranda. We must avoid his ambush. The poets who know the spells of language advise we strike the word match against a stone and light up the word bonfire to keep him away. Coyotes scurry when they spot fire dancing with air.

Confused I hear a ghost undress, so I wait. Dead birds have thirteen unlucky hearts. I sit on a chair in front of the last corner of the night.

Drunk on Sunsets To return to what we were as children we must grow inside as light filtered through sorrow. Devour the rivers that whiten the memory. Listen to the cries of flowering trees. Fly kites with colored arms at the seashore then sit and watch the afternoon sun as it sets in our pockets.

By all that is Holy Kiss the other, and let her settle the sacred earth of a frozen forest. Then  burn your inner self with the language animals use during intercourse. The sincerest words, a response to desperation.

A Grammatically Correct Biographical Note Who do we believe we are, if all we do fits into a couple of lines?

Invisibles stirred the cauldron of history over the flames where their legends burned ... now the cooling hands of women

Cannons         Invisibles jiggle in the cauldron of history. Those who do not remember the name of their president hide in their houses between pages of deleted files in the Networks where they trap their own legends. Tomorrow is the last day of the arid void of their deserts, tombs where animals that do not know how to become extinct lie  preserved forever.         Invisibles stirred the cauldron of history over the flames where their legends burned ... now the cooling hands of women.

Lithograph by Fran z Cižek The Hinge          Forgive the craft of pouring myself into pitchers. Water cannot tolerate thirst for long periods of time, the thirst that invaded my home during the years of submarginal words. Burglars burned down the charity bazaars and school libraries. Now my son will inherit a handful of ashes. Only "The Imprint of Reticence"   remains.

Uno de mis poemas acaba de llegar en Segundo lugar en una competencia de poesía en España. Les dejo saber más dentro de poco.

I am as Lonely as Falling Drops of Rain I am the poem that began at dawn. One day all the sand of Abyssinia sprouted from my eyes and all the perfume in Paris originated from my fingers. Another day I saw the moon rise on a river in the Far East, saw her drown herself completely drunk on life. I also remember that long night when I wept bitterly the wrath of God in the dying eyes of a sad alpaca. And that other day when I opened two hundred and eighty-three doors looking for a letter that said: We learned to challenge darkness with more darkness. I am that poem that began  at dawn  but soon ended.

by Frida Kahlo Adiós “Cuando te hablen de amor y de ilusiones,”                                     José Alfredo Jiménez                      Soy melodía de un amor que no es mío, álgebra del aire remoto que asciende desde los sepulcros. Quiero ir perdiéndome en aquel espacio perfecto donde la piel       termine de pudrirse.  Sal                                          ...

We, the poets of the Waka tradition sometimes get married and when our demanding spouse puts us through the rag we flee from the conjugal house, with the healthy purpose of walking the dog, or filling the kettle with evening water from the river Placid .

No Time to Lose It's cold here. Its color, a ninja turtle orange, and only 5 days left for el Presidente Electo to inaugurate his burned hair, his head of a hijo de la chingada, his midget politician tweets. People say it's worth traveling to this Swearing In, that this kind of shit makes you grow. The thing is my body cannot stand another Jetblue seat, another Greyhound cafe. Besides, winter hurts. Its whiteness rusts the snow. Its racism confuses me, makes me feel small, like a very distant echo. Fuck it, if I go back to D.C. it's because I want to visit the Smithsonian's African American Collection. Where merchant ships loaded with shipwrecked slaves cry out my name.

No hay tiempo que perder Aquí sigue haciendo un frio color ninja turtle naranja y solo quedan 5 días para que el President Elect inaugure sus cabellos quemados, su cabeza de chingada madre, sus tweets de político enano. La gente está diciendo que vale la pena viajar a la juramentación, que esa mierda te hace crecer. Solo que mi cuerpo no aguanta otro asiento de Jetblue, otro Greyhound caf é . Además, me duele el invierno, me oxida la blancura de la nieve. El racismo me confunde, me hace sentir pequeño, me escucho como un eco muy distante. Al carajo, si vuelvo al D.C. va a ser para ir al Smithsonian donde buques cargados de esclavos náufragos me llaman.