Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

First Takeover The day has three faces you must bundle it up before smoking it You can't roll it and put it away because it tastes different, dry You can't buy prepaid days lined up in a box We senses days the same way a bassist guesses the entrance of the piano or , he sax it's announced by the aroma of coffee we drink like evictees

Ficus leaves are hearts of stars they rise like a herd of gestures that lunch on cobwebs and read fire like nervous owls they mend each other like fire mount each other like dust swallow each other like seas revise each other like air perennially brief perennially fleeing They're leaves              loving each other                    they only rise

I Let Myself Fall I know my life will end the way a storm ceases― dissolved in your image already water I’ll return to your sweetness― sparkling wings of doves spread more air than the hurricanes your face lost in the crowd, using my hand  as its bed , dictates my death a throb under the asphalt awaits ... the stream of life that shapes and destroys me arrives at your shrine crossing your garden, pierced so many times by the bougainvillea I turn away life forgetful of the tumble

crossing your garden, pierced so many times by the bougainvillea         I turn away life forgetful of the tumble

a throb under the asphalt awaits ... stream of life that shapes and destroys me arrives at your shrine

your face lost in the crowd, lying in bed on my hand, dictates my death

I’ll return to your sweetness― sparkling wings of doves spread more air than the hurricanes

a dove or a child a song between bed sheets

I know my life will end the way a storm ceases― dissolved in your image already water

When Language Breaks The most genuine tree fills up with you and your larvae. The narrowest street, the one full of gossip, inhabits you. Water pronounces your name when it suffuses our hands with pure beauty. You draw your face on the most horrible dry winter leaf and I still recognize you. Although the world surrenders to us all it's impossible to reach you. Right now, no one’s home. Only you. And you're howling like a wounded wolf. A part of me, of your light, left with to the last name that names us. The other part, the smallest, disappeared with your voice. I mean, your voice was the language of everyday things when you lived. Now language is the skin of the world. That's why we always baptize Death wearing blindfolds. That night I talked to my father who sat at the table. I said what Sharon Olds never could :: The photograph I wanted to find in the family album :: Brothers and sisters t...

I got my hard copy of The Stillwater Review where one of my poems appears. Excellent printing job, I love it!

Issue 12 of UNDERTOW TANKA REVIEW is Live! Painting by Mario Carreño Morales, Encuentro Junto al Mar

a river  runs through my life thirst hounds me

Abacus Sun Names covered with ivory exile enter my room isolations whitewash the walls camouflage, their trickeries Even the purest air brimming with morning white thins

Poem Up at Califragile, A new journal owned and edited by one of my favorite poets, Wren Tautha: On My Way to Disbelief 

My first Collection of Poems, Elephant Graveyard , will be published in the US. I'll let you all know more as soon as I can.

Tattooed with Chinese Script I wake up every morning before the rest of the city to open the birdcage so you’ll hear the bird sing. Wake up broken, open the cage, gulp the tears, blow what remains of my wings at dawn. My eyelids are tattooed with Chinese script. I put away my cross-eyed heritage, my short path to erotic paintings, my wet torso moaning with desire, to call out you. You know my dead, my gestures, my prayers. You offer them food, serve them my eyes that never sleeps, have not lived here for a century. You name the bird, guess if it is captive.

Letter #51 Today there’s a self-drawn sketch of rice on my forehead, a tiny sorrow. This mourning is the unhappy reward of what we never talk about. Today I tire of birds, cut off my wings. A tiger devoured my arms, an old disgruntled tiger. It drank my blood, disappeared like smoke resembling the roar of an insomniac ocean. Today I walked into the surf with my pockets full of rocks.

Youth carries with it the demanding, relentless need to relate everything to love Martin, I sat on the doorsteps of your house. I saw flowers with leaves like swords. They looked like soldiers. You were a soldier. You marched into my life. I came to say, I love you but you were not here, so I wrote it down on a notepad. Martin, I stopped writing to let my arms hang uselessly over my body. I always sat down and waited, even as a child I bided my time. All women wait for a future life, their images forged in solitude. We see bridesmaids walking towards us, a promise, a man, a pomegranate that opens and displays its red, shiny grains, a pomegranate like a thousand mouths. Oh, my love, we are all so full of inner portraits, so full of unappreciated landscapes.

I dive into those tiny pitfalls that set us up for life, traps as small as the cages to hunt sparrows. Some days, on specific days, Mondays and Fridays, when opening my balcony, I look and see with all my senses, hear with all my senses, smell with all the senses. I am a stubborn fiddle in evidence, a delusional excuse and life flips on me like a card game. It makes me fall in love with new lips, hurries and makes me as essential as driving credentials, a: here is my hand, my millions of hands. My skin quivers with infinite pity. Humankind kills, dies, lies, steals, gives up with its back to Beethoven's Ninth in the voracious desire for permanence. Confuses freedom with movement. Sleeps armed against other men and against the little man inhabiting the clearest corners of my chest despite that music, despite the sun that rises. Despite the fierce, clean, morning Ode to Joy denying the spoils of yesterday's dinner. Life...