SICK LIT MAGAZINE

Upended

Far from all forms of charity,

I am the prophet, the retired apostle

of faith in myself.

 

My friends: escape artists,

foreshadowers of verses,

sunk in the quicksands of language.

 

They believe in the melodies I babble

exalting legendary elephant graveyards

and mystic monsoons.

 

We witness the paradigms of a century fall

while celebrating a Wimbledon match,

a joy much greater than revolving revolutions.

 

 

Walking in a Limbo of Words

the lighthouse of the indefinite

trafficking voices of absence,

skeleton walls smuggle freedom.

 

My country: a poem under an illegal shade.

A sun full of cameras rides

my skin like ghosts

who claim what is rightfully theirs.

 

I lead the echoes of my flight

to a heart masked

as theatrical delirium,

my wrinkled memoir

slow dancing to Etta James’s,

I found a dream, that I could speak to.

A dream that I can call my own 

At last… I touch your lips

 

with my revolutionary blood

and leave my confession

on your cinnamon eyes.

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.