Two Poems by Sergio Ortiz

The Mind is its Own Place
 
We all yearn to go back 
to the edge of that fire and kick 
that fucking election, the religion, the race 
of an entire nation in the balls 
so everything breathes
at the rhythm of our lungs. 
 
But none of that worries us now. 
We worry about the detonator of tomorrows,
the almond beyond the shell, 
the shiny nugget, and the damn heat 
even when we know it’s November
and an eerie cold is fast approaching. 
 
We want pleasure to surround 
our waist.  It can be you, or anybody else
who embraces my body 
already lightened
by the burden of the world. 
Yes, you can take me
to the sea inside
where there is only the sound of blood
running like a flowered beast.
 
And so, we go back to our room
tell yourselves,           
fuck it, it’s better this way?






The Damage

Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
The Gift Outright, Robert Frost
 
​
Maybe life gave us too much
at the beginning 
and we kept looking
 
for a path that maintained 
enough of a balance
so as not to become
this pestilent air.
 
Maybe life did not belong 
to us anymore,
maybe the things we believed in 
were part of the damage,
 
part of the petulant wind 
knocking down the walls 
of our nation.
 
And if we had known the outcome
would we have put our hands together
or looked elsewhere, 
renounced everything to stay still
so as not to cross the days that agonize?
 
This is so immense 
it doesn't fit into tears.
 
We’ll hear the results,
but there’s no greater nostalgia 
than that of the future.



Bio: Sergio A. Ortiz is a gay Puerto Rican poet, and the founding editor of Undertow Tanka Review. He is a two time Pushcart nominee, a four time Best of the Web nominee, and a 2016 Best of the Net nominee. His poems have been published in hundreds Journals and Anthologies. He is currently working on his first full length collection of poems, Elephant Graveyard.