Not Even Dogs is a first in three ways: it's
Ernesto Priego debut poetry collection, it's the first single-author
hay(na)ku collection, & it's
Meritage Press's first book to be published after making the switch to POD production via
Lulu. Counting to three is a potent little charm.
Not Even Dogs by Ernesto Priego
6 x 9, perfect bound, 116 pp.
ISBN 13: 978-1-4116-8992-3
$12.99An sample poem from the book's third section, "Cities,":
Tenth City
You
were here
before I could
understand
what cities
do to people.
I
used to
play baseball in
cornfields
now condos
with tennis courts,
and
soon you
became the monster
under
everyone's beds
waiting, breathing, grey,
enormous,
fierce, beautiful
yet horribly impossible,
full
of possibility
and still sad
and
so frustrated,
infiltrated by fears
you
yourself cannot
properly define. City
of
lost corners
and savory folklore,
full
of tastes
and noises and
overt
chaos controlled
by god knows
what
call it
quantum physics or
divine
intervention but
you are everywhere
like
a weary
fury deciding futures
of
those who
lived within you.
Here
every inch
is replete with
stories
of unrequitted
love & hate
of
aspiration &
reconstruction & the
abduction
of dreams
& everything else
for
treinta pesos
al día sobrevives
if
things go
well, remember that,
city
of lost
origins & horizons,
of
ambitions &
claxons, of ghosts
under
the fallen
buildings and tents
under
the wealthy
fantastic urban landscapes
of
non-existent cities
that are not
&
could not
but still are.
Unnamable
city, breathing
still, in spite
of
everything you
are because you,
city
where skies
have forgotten all
skies
were meant
to be remains,
loved
and hated,
populated by spectres,
seeking
justice, or
just some peace,
without
hiding behind
self-imposed jail bars.
In
my dreams
I see you
always
from above,
from the sky
or
from an
illuminated cloudy hill,
seeing
you shine
as an artificial,
sick
heart, counting
pulses before finally,
tragically,
silently, turn
out your lights.
Read the other nine cities in the sequence here. (The poems appear in the book in reverse numerical order, 10-1).
Labels: Lulu, Meritage Press, POD/Print on Demand