Sergio Ortiz is a retired educator, poet, and photographer.  He has a B.A. in English literature, and aM.A. in philosophy.  Flutter Pressreleased his debut chapbook, At the Tail End of Dusk, in October of 2009.  Ronin Press released his second chapbook,topography of a desire, in May of 2010. Avantacular Press released his first photographic chapbook: TheSugarcane Harvest, May 2010.  His thirdchapbook: Wet Stones and Bedbugs in my Mattress, will be released by FlutterPress in November of 2010. He was recently published, or is forthcoming in: Carcinogenic Poetry,Perceptions Magazine of the Arts 2010, BorderSenses, Offcourse Literary Journal,Cavalier Literary Couture, and Touch: The Journal of Healing.

She’s a homophobic warlord with a miniature bible carefully tucked in her bra (Issue 19.)

Three Poems (Issue 9.)

She’s a homophobic warlord with a miniature bible carefully tucked in her bra

It started before she could read
at Sunday mass
she’d stare at the faces of immovable angels—
La Madonna and byzantine saints
in cut-glass windows—imagining herself
speaking to the masses.

When her boobs started growing
the junior high jock,
a prodigy bible belt preacher,
invited her to Watchtower
study classes. Theygraduated,
married, and filled-out their NRA applications
on the very same day.

Everything was stasis, but she walks-in
on her husband and the church's accountant,
a six foot love gift from the Castro district.

Two hundred nineteen years after La Bastille
she remarried,
joined a New Age theosophy movement
learned to suck her thumbs and self flagellate
while screaming slogans
about the constitutional rights of breeders
on a prime-time puppeteer program in Puerto Rico.

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Three Poems (September 21, 2009. Issue 9.)

Hard Shove into the Void

The cheapest quest is a boy
walking behind another boy
holding father and mother’s perfect

hands, with round beady
eyes like those he dreamed
in recurring dreams.

A boy watching another boy swing
in air gets an ache
that is a hard shove into the void.

There is such an animal,
in me, I remember him in places
like Paris, with such a hunger.

In an Hour

Like everything that finds me,
damned spring,
you’ve set the price
on what blooms around the periphery
of my brow.
And here I am drawing on
conclusions.
Who cares if love comes
and goes in an hour?
Goddamned lying spring,
allow me to kiss you as if a kiss
were more than just a kiss.

Fractal Moonlight

wait for the moon   to break at dawn
over dunes of golden sand     wait until I bury
these pulsations        in your arms  
fractal moonlight      glistens through paths
of leafless bodies        moaning & twitching
like liquid fire        breath thrust upon 
the windmills in my eyes    wait for me in May

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