The Lottery

Babylon
cut off
my index finger
out of anger.
It sold me
a lottery ticket
convinced
that buying
myself
out of slavery
was the only option.

I'll tell
Babylon
that it is dreaming.
Its fire
withers
in the temple.

I am
my own
poem, a kiss.
Here
there is no
pretending.

Before Darkness/A Trilogy

Above

We decided to hunt for butterflies
on the other side of the fence,
between old statues of father,
in overgrown grass,
the place he keeps his untamed calf.

Rolling towards the pit,
(where civets harvest musk,
and the sky gives way to night)
was father's code to play,
the list of sanctions
too long for me to write.

We put our catch in glass jars.
Pushed, touched, and joked
in such a way as not to break
my father's code. But in the end
you kissed another man.

Below
They rested on the shoulders
of statues. He said they perfumed
summer with a kind of musk.

We took the beautiful ones
out of the jar, pierced with a pin
and let them dry. The ministry

of their wings kept us awake.
We disappeared to the other side
of the fence where father

kept the untamed calf. He unbuttoned
my pants. I didn't care, father had been dead
for years, dead and all I wanted
was another kiss.

Between

Father's code was the magnet:
his classical order,
control, synthesis, rules.
Half a statue, was what was left.
Half a pasture, half a fence.

I was ten and a half
on the day of the magnet,
his untamed calf.
He was half a year older
and never quite faithful.

Aunt Enriqueta would read us
stories of houses that made noises,
--padam padam padam--
dogs' eyeballs slit
with half
a razor.
It was rainbows on butterfly wings,
and the scent of musk
we found in a kiss

and I do believe in you and you in me.
We've been together for half a century.
Now, give this old man one last kiss.

Sergio Ortiz grew up in Chicago, studied English literature at Inter-American University in San German, Puerto Rico, philosophy at World University. He was an ESL teacher most of his life but also worked with the elderly blind population as a Daily Living Skills Instructor at the El Paso Lighthouse for the Blind, and the Texas Lions Camp. He studied culinary art at The Restaurant School in Philadelphia and became a chef but ended up teaching. His work has been published in Origami Condom, Poets Ink Review, POUI The Cave, Flutter, Silenced Press, Cause & Effect, The Cherry Blossom Review, Kritya, Ink Sweat & Tears, Ascent Aspirations, Cause & Effect, and The Battered Suitcase. He is pending publication in two dozen other Literary Journals.

Email: Sergio Ortiz

Return to Table of Contents