Sergio Ortiz
Sergio A. Ortiz is a poet, a two-time Pushcart nominee, a four-time Best of the Web nominee, and 2016 Best of the Net nominee. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Loch Raven Review, Drunk Monkeys, Algebra Of Owls, Free State Review, and The Paragon Journal.
When he's fed up with being invisible
and doesn’t want to be a vintage pic
he walks to the beach, plants feet in the sand
next to a tropical grape tree and waits.
The swift banks of my memory
suppress drunken details. I hear
a dissertation embedded in the vases
of death, the abyss that rubs
my shortcomings on your chest
To defend José Lezama Lima is a right
defend him from God and from the hell
of majuscules and luck
stiff-necks and influxes
of the azure
I am the guestbook pages
hundreds of people, with a single name
and many languages, sign.
Elegies chase after me.
Somewhere in our body
there is an alarm, an alert thermostat
sending its pulsations, something that says:
NOW!
