SurVision Magazine

An Animal Resembling Desire


Under an undecided bird
the day whines about orphanhoods,
clouds of absence hurt
a dark, putrid silence.

One by one the city awakens
its dead under a tired sky
to offer the waters
of its most recent words.

An animal resembling desire 
extends laborious wings to petrify
the only tree standing.
Under fear's silhouette

infancy picks up its waist
and places it on a stone blind wall.
Under desperation leaves
a god made of solitudes

forces the clouds
to rain punishments
and transform boulders
into jaguars.





The Last Threshold


The promise to return
to the place where life began

Failure, to be banished
from an endless happiness

Shadows that wandered
the desert carrying their own past

A leaf-storm-fear
thrown to the felines of night

A beggar's desire going door
to door and sitting on the steps

of the last threshold
to discuss his ragged loneliness

his bones, a premonition
of the mirror where death calls

The indelible imprint of pain
and undaunted scars

A history of humiliating executioners
and false fabulists

The unsatisfied thirst of gods
who bully us with their vengeance

and a tree who in its old age
only nests birds of prey





Sergio A. Ortiz is a retired educator, poet, painter, and photographer from Puerto Rico. Flutter Press released his debut chapbook, At the Tail End of Dusk, in 2009; Ronin Press released his second chapbook, topography of a desire, in 2010. His new chapbook, An Animal Resembling Desire is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2018. His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Loch Raven Review, Drunk Monkeys, Algebra of Owls, Free State Review, and The Paragon Journal. He is currently working on his first full-length collection of poems, Elephant Graveyard.