Noumenal

by Sergio A. Ortiz

I lost the taste for your Cyclops stare
a little before we left
for our Sunday morning walk
on Pluto’s moon.
I discovered a heap of letters
under your pillow.
They were ready
to become accents,
syllables with alien rhythms,
words, similes that challenge
the imagination.
You reached my tower
with your cock throbbing,
spouting lubricant—fallen fruit
of your willful tree.
I asked you a third time,
what did you call a home?
Because the third time
is the one that gets conquered,
the one that does not shoot
itself in the heart. Tell me the truth,
where do I find the boundaries
of your castle?

The Three of Us

by Sergio A. Ortiz

She is a paralytic relapse,
a succession of fixed images
completes her figure.
I am surprised I can’t remember
how quickly she walked with her crutches
among the magnolias, showing off
the doll smile polite children
carefully rehearse to use on special occasions.
My memory of her is set like a picture
from my photo album, flat; my aunt
wearing furs and white gloves
on Hollywood Beach in Chicago.

I remember her sitting by the lifeguard
weeping, or pretending to weep
so he would approach. She’d give him
miniature cacti in bloom
from the garden of the evils of Venus.
She never asked what he was reading,
but when she’d look into his eyes
I could see her going through the pages.
She’d soak in every one of the images, poked
the ones that were sad

and laughed wanting to give them a new
perspective. Then she’d lick the steel
legs of the park bench and hide under it
imitating poodles and canaries.
Didn’t mean anything to me.

I also remember her alone
on Ariel, Uranus’s moon.
My eyes alternating between the book
and her long-shiny-black-hair.

She-he-I was always different,
it depended on the lifeguard.