The Wax Paper

Sergio Ortiz - We Should Rehearse

 

Sergio Ortiz

WE SHOULD REHEARSE

for the day when we are blind

We should all learn to read with our fingers

the braille of scars on arms and sperm 

of melted candles. Remove for one night, 

every fortnight, the white bulb in our bedroom.

Because before death 

comes blindness. And Charon will not accept 

our fear as payment to cross the river Styx.

For a winged birth

steel must cut the meat

and throw away the body.

It's not the sky that grants us flight.

It's the fall.

 
 

Sergio A. Ortiz is a two-time Pushcart nominee, a four-time Best of the Web nominee, and 2016 Best of the Net nominee. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in FRIGG, Tipton Poetry Journal, Drunk Monkeys, Bitterzeot Magazine, Moko, and The Paragon Journal.  He is currently working on his first full-length collection of poems, Elephant Graveyard.