Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Poem Up at Ascent Aspirations Magazine: Friday's Poems July 14, 2017 Issue

Poem Up at The Good Men Project

Voodoo He gave me a handmade box with floral motifs and four voodoo pins inside, four tiny children nailed to my body. He said: I'm yours even if required to prick the bolt between my legs and that viscera, the heart. Pessimistic butterflies flew. I heard their flapping, and in the shadows. The snap of a non-existent tongue.

Point of No Return A dart points at him from the corner of its eye his aftershave gives the afternoon a senseless titillation. A kiss hangs on a thread of that invisible line drawn in the air like the flight of an insect. Can that faraway flash of the lips, those bits of ardor in words be called kisses? Time passes beyond the two men, the point zero of love.

Let’s Sail Together There are footprints that persist in the fertile land of silence and oblivion capsizes between luminescences sunrise gathering on the skin. It was mine, the dance you denied. There are dreams that should never be tossed into the current or doubt. We will sail together. Our vessel can never be sunk.

The Things We Draw on Maps There are men who write where men don’t speak peaceful revolts which overthrow bloodthirsty kings business men who give undeserved gifts music in the middle of a battlefield strawberries in the woods people who meet & understand each other amazing triumphs of love with no strings attached There are small precarious paradises along the path we walk on the shore of a wild monstrous sea where it smells like grilled fish & festive laughter where we play without rules and balance in unison on large red hammocks where we embrace & lose track of time. Where we forget with cheerful vehemence.

The flood stopped after nineteen days. Men emerged from mud. Built their houses on vigorous trees they later called The Tree of Life . That's how they worked. We, chastened crows, wait for the sun to solidify the earth.

Forgotten He arrived from Lebanon ready to repair and sell carpets. Gold and ruby fibers put the mystery of time to rest. He doesn't know the twentieth century will part like a blizzard, same as every other. When night barges in without hands ticking won't be necessary ―mountains and magical mango trees, will shed the light  of a lost recollection. Blood says nothing of his Maronite prayers or of his grief in an old Kobayat alley where he scattered his childhood. But a longing for an Arabic call to prayer is rare.

3 Poems up at The Basil O' Flaherty 

Mr. Man’s Man One day I'll know you’re not eternal and that you don't exhale lavender, that your sweat isn't honey. I'll learn your hands don't shape my world, your laughter doesn’t own my hours. I'll undergo the loneliness of stars, the impotence of the sea before the moon. That’ll be the day my sunsets end.

Martini Barhop   Did you like Waiting for Godot?                 I didn't get it. That guy, what was his                                                                        name? Godot, baby, Godot.                                    Yeah him, he never showed up. That's what it's all about. Most people don't understand. Tell your friends at the law firm that you saw it. It'll give you status.             Let's get a drink. It is two in the morning.        ...

Poem Up at AMARYLLIS : Piece of My Heart Piece of My Heart Ms. Joplin your voice rips apart my face, my tie― the mark of all hanged men. My remains roll on the ground and the edge of your voice blows my Monday into pieces. I have the hunger of the employee staring with contempt at the image of his face in the glass door. My hunger, a factory of anxieties, its certainties, is convinced that nothing will improve, that this flagship raised during youth will also sink. My last refuge will have to be the skin or the solitary bottle of whisky. Janis, your voice is a knife vibrating in the throat of pain. But now silence. I have come to the place where little masters live and I hurry to annihilate the desire of damning all to hell.

sentry nowhere left to look the rain cleared the way no dream with open doors       the only devotee         confinement outside, night strolls  on its high heels I lie in wait of myself the hours trip  on what I never say

Spring Birth Born in March, I was never baptized, my parents decided I should decide for myself. Grew up in a Wesleyan school. I have recited Our Father Who so many times I'm dumb. I don't miss  the uniform, the ties, or the chemistry teacher. Now I almost never pray. I liked not being popular. But I've had more than five good friends. Raised in an exclusive neighborhood of an inclusive city on rice-beans and pork chops. The first grandchild, nephew, son. I was, as expected,  spoiled. My grandfather was a poet and a journalist. Grandma hid his manuscripts,  but I read his poems in secret. Enjoyed my family,  although I told them little of my life. Collected the songs of Felipe Pirela. Discovered love at twenty, wept for the love  at twenty-six, confused it with lust  and transformed it into  a good many farewells at forty. True, the best shags are not  those one-night stands.

Poem Up at Door is a Jar Magazine

Poem Up at Excavation Lit journal, Toilets, I'm so glad this poem finally got published.

PIN Quarterly Journal just published two of my poems. This is a Nigerian publication, and I love it! The poems are: Bare Embers, a gay erotica poem ( breaking ground, since I hear there is a 14 year prison sentence for being gay in Nigeria) and There Were Windy Street, an anti-Syrian war poem dedicated to the Syrian children.

Canine shadow bleeding gargoyles      canine pluslachrymal amid bastard                contraplayful rubs of my very absent       margins Nymphomaniac hawk             with ululation hounding predream                     hymens. Viable delucid             canine shadow penumbra riddled by interrogating          red harpoon cocks, deep gray ivy              cockeyed weary guest inside the wrong         apartment.

Poem Up at Psaltery & Lyre

Poem Up at YES POETRY