On Their Eightieth Birthday
dedicated to the Governor of Arizona
His aunt thinks she’s a tapestry?
-First she thought she was a Tapir,
then a pole. I stuffed a butt plug in her mouth,
but she asked for a loincloth.
She fell in love with my skin, wanted to peel
it, peel me—Our lady of the Broken Condoms,
Latina Americana gringa wanna be
with the sagging breast implants.
What was he doing with gunpowder in his pockets?
—You know why he wears those tight pants!
Yeah, but if you stare at his tray
he calls you every urban word he ever learned
from Justin Timberlake.
—Baby he needs to go back to school
before he bad-mouths me.
Gel and visits to the hairdresser
twice a month to put on those caramel
highlights... metro-sexual? I don’t think so.
snap-snap - zip-zip
—Girl, she empties his wallet
before putting on those condoms every time.
Dumb-ass gringo wanna be.
—Um-hum, like Osvaldo Del Rio!
No, that’s the Puerto Rican Actor
that beats up his women.
You know, I’m talking about
that Mexican guy from Univision,
Fernando Del Rincón.
He can brush his hair back all he wants,
he’s still going to look like a mestizo.
- Sergio A. Ortiz
(featured in the poetry forum 06.22.10)
To the Zookeeper on the Hudson
When I was ten a pedophile
covered my naked body
with leaves and spider webs,
then left me for dead and oh,
I was so sick.
Fifty years later your spidery jaws,
and spineless back entered my bible
and boarded my ark like a baboon
courting the tree of knowledge
with its bare ass clambering around
like a deformed cunt on the long coastal
line of insincerity and oh, how you
made me laugh. Knowing: is how to live
standing in the nude on the porticos,
the rotundas of my courtyard
watching you clean the manure
on the Hudson, barren mother
of an adopted albino blank-faced idiot,
heavy old cow with the dull stars.
The vowels of your last name fall
like an empty echo to the least
of all my canyons.
- Sergio A. Ortiz
(added 06.22.10)
Nightmares, Secrets, and Museums
Think of me as Dionysus
resting with a fetus inside my leg
as lasting less than a candle or a rock
Think of me as gusts unexpected
vibrations on earth’s surface
it does not fancy us here
Grapes shrivel as leaves fade
to their sepia dwellings
Think of me as wordless translations
of poems breathing in the silent spaces
all over this museum, as secrets
in a secret language
- Sergio A. Ortiz
(added 05.17.10)
Calico Eyes
He gave her a hot oily stare
soon as he realized someone else
could dream about her.
What if they changed the shade
of her copper skin, or if her eyes
were no longer calico?
What if she followed that man
to the movies and flipped
her phone number into his hand
just to watch the leaf storm
wade around his body?
What if she wanted to touch,
touch and lift him with her copper
right there… in the dream?
- Sergio A. Ortiz
(added 05.17.10)
Transparency
What are you made of,
mime with painted palms
and sweaty bare
feet? How much longer
can you take in the air
all that empty space, the caiman
leaves for you to breathe?
Frail frame, proceed
and tune the white organza
mesh for the screen-painting
your imagination seeks.
When the canvas dries
don’t forget to wipe
the crowded cell
in which you’ve
always lived.
- Sergio A. Ortiz
(featured in the poetry forum 05.17.10)
Professional Cover Letter to a Reputable Poetry and Prose Journal
War Child Emmanuel
999 Upside Down, RD
Mama Lives In Hell,
Pick any Third World Country, 77066
warchild@itcouldhappeninyourbackyard.com
December 25th,
of current year,
if I get a chance to live that long
Dear Editors,
My name is War Child Emmanuel.
I am 16.
I these poems:
Antonio, my Baby Brother, Lost an Arm and a Leg,
Mama Got AIDS from an Enemy Soldier,
and Papa Hung Himself behind our Hut this Dry Season,
are for your publishing consideration.
I really don’t know if I can wait
longer than thirty days for your response.
I’m on the run, killed my sergeant and ran off with his computer.
If any of these poems are accepted but I don’t respond,
go ahead and publish them anyway,
it really is important.
This is not
a simultaneous submission.
Emmanuel
- Sergio A. Ortiz
(added 02.07.10)
The Miles
A life to serve under the brightness
of elongated moons,
a deeply secret road where my fingers braid
an endless thread of plenty around your spur,
the bank of our first dawn together—
tearing at my pollen walls.
Pleasant: the labyrinth of temperate water,
fear, a premonition of the spiraling
absence in the sweetness of your voice,
the miles of all that could have been.
- Sergio A. Ortiz
(added 02.07.10)
Quilts, Flags, and other Wrappings
I started the quilt
when the only reminder
of civility I had was a stuffed doll
whose button eyes fell off.
Sewed while bathing
under the moon’s eclipse
and watched you throw my porcelain spoons,
a collection of gifts, against the wall.
I stopped stitching
when you drove that bulldozer
in sight of all those present
at Jose's welfare funeral just because
he was my friend.
Stared at the tangled patches
as they threw me into a paddy wagon
and took me to jail for protesting
that unwinnable war.
I climbed into his bed even as he lay
covered with Kaposi’s sarcoma
to calm both our fears.
Studied you when a signature
to keep your only brother
from becoming homeless
made you think and shudder
at the funeral expense if he died
while the blotch of endearment
was still on that piece
of white insignificance.
It was then I added the names.
- Sergio A. Ortiz
(featured in the poetry forum 02.07.10)
To the Huarango Tree: A destroyed ecosystem
Charcoal and sand devour our cities—pay no attention
to the resting places of our ancestors, a spring of light
with its fierce harvest of pomegranate, grapes, and huarango.
Demons blow until there is nothing but the dark. Our lives
are broken lamps hung on the shadows of missing trees. It was
in the substance of the bones we ground and ate like a war.
- Sergio A. Ortiz
(added 12.28.09)
My Palace in the Shade
I’ve spoken to my hands before,
whenever I’ve had visions
of Hitler with a hose up his rectum
in hell. My smile reaches new limits.
Why—peeping through Hoffman’s camera—am I
more alive alone than when I am with another man?
I know people have nightmares about blood,
if not about blood, roots. It’s an excuse
to keep dying, and ask for the time. My palace
in the shade is full of books packed with questions. Is
the law, cops rubbing their eyes, and its curvature
an American sentence?
Is it true doves are demanding
they be allowed to go to war in heaven?
I’ve become a saint. My grace
has a catheter in its nadir.
- Sergio A. Ortiz
(featured in the poetry forum 12.28.09)
Save Me
Constant thirst,
my isle knows its image
of the sky,
the hands on its drum,
its millenary slave.
Mend these lines
of broken stitches.
Labor, slide
under this portico
without disturbing
my stillness.
- Sergio A. Ortiz
(added 12.28.09)
Memoirs
It takes depth
to write memoirs,
afternoons full of
questions,
before my voice floods
the cemetery
with music.
- Sergio A. Ortiz
(featured in the poetry forum 11.04.09)
Water
Loss
has no sound,
yet is not difficult
to read.
There is strength
in water,
my hair rusts
in its pursuit.
The rest is
shallow,
let’s keep it a
secret.
- Sergio A. Ortiz
(featured in the poetry forum 09.24.09) |
