Sergio Ortiz
The Mind Is its Own Place
We all yearn to go back
to the edge of that fire and kick
that fucking election, the religion, the race
of an entire nation in the balls
so everything breathes
at the rhythm of our lungs.
But none of that worries us now.
We worry about the detonator of tomorrows,
the almond beyond the shell,
the shiny nugget, and the damn heat
even when we know it’s November
and an eerie cold is fast approaching.
We want pleasure to surround
our waist. It can be you, or anybody else
who embraces my body
already lightened
by the burden of the world.
Yes, you can take me
to the sea inside
where there is only the sound of blood
running like a flowered beast.
And so, you go back to our room
tell yourselves,
fuck it, it’s better this way?
Sergio A. Ortiz is a gay Puerto Rican poet and the founding editor of Undertow Tanka Review. His collections of Tanka include For the Men to Come (2014) and From Life to Life (2014). He is a two-time Pushcart nominee and a four-time Best of the Web nominee.