deadpaper
poems
fiction
about deadpaper
sergio a. ortiz
 
   

Ortiz has a B.A. in English literature from Inter-American University, and a M.A. in philosophy from World University.  His poems have been recently published, or are forthcoming in: The Battered Suitcase, Zygote in my Coffee, Right Hand Pointing, and Poui: Cave Hill Journal of Creative Writing.  Flutter Press published his chapbook, At the Tail End of Dusk (2009).

  
   
Dedications
  
To my enemies: 
a face-à-face. 
 
To insomnia: 
pears or apples, a carrot. 
 
To landscapes: 
a white South African security guard asleep
in a Kimberly diamond mine. 
 
To classrooms: 
a clock, the sobriety of water. 
 
To distance: 
what I remember about Omar,
the brightness of a sweaty, naked body.
a stealthy light deep within my pupils. 
 
To love:
a truce, and then another truce.
  
   
Terror Plot
 
   
dedicated to Marcel Proust
 
-  Will you return after the lunar eclipse?
-  No, it reminds me too much of Ingrid Bergman in The Visit!
-  Is it true, are you from another country?
-  I have been known to undress in public!
-  Is it the swinging from twisted forest vines?
-  Why won’t you ask me about the man dying in a wheelchair?
     His leg wrapped in plastic hides maggots, twilight.
-  You're always blaming the paralysis on the house!
-  Go ahead insist, they’ll never forget him, he’s not invisible!
-  Didn’t they forget the vigil, the crystals, Haiti?
-  Why bring that up now?
-  Because when your name is Illyana you end up wearing
     the color of night on your skin.
-  And spyglasses?
-  And laboratory secrets.
-  The kinds that make you beg to be from another country
     and spit at the Mona Lisa.
-  The country tattooed on their backs?
-  Tattooed on the vernal equinox.
-  When will we tear off the veils of their indecency?
-  When we forgive them for being from another country
     and slaughtering dolphins.
-  After the lunar eclipse!
-  As we end this conversation!
-  Are we done?
-  There is something I want you to read!
-  What?
-  A poem about airplane parts.
-  Scattered all over the sea?
  
   
Divination, Photography, Labyrinth
 
   
First Movement: The Divination
 
I am / you are / we are:
This hemlock teardrop, if it makes
you love me a little longer / this fractured foam /
this island continent of death / this wavering weakness /
this burning carousel /
this casting of lots.
 
Second Movement: The Photography
 
I am / you are / we are:
This uncertain space in the still-relief
of birds / this song coming off the fused pistil
of a violet tulip / this deep blue shawl
carefully extended over fretful
grey waters / this Styrofoam abstract
on the sidewalk.
  
Third Movement: The Labyrinth
 
I am / you are / we are:
This moss-mouth morning after / this caribou moss /
this mossback turtle / this perennial moss / this irish moss /
this haircap moss / this split-tooth moss / this no fruit moss /
this water-measuring moss / this flat moss /
this spanish moss / this fucking flea moss.
  
   
Platforms
  
   
between hatred and garland
there’s an esperantist wolf
between a cactus and a lute
there’s roughness of wind
between a drunk and a compass
there's a stench of distance
between parchment and volcano
there’s a smudge of light
between a zarzuela and a Mayan
there are neurotic governesses—
poetes maudits
between fortune-teller and hail
there’s a brook and a sniper