Ernesto Priego


Three poems from Gravity and Grace

Gravity woke me up at four a.m., again.
“Grace is not home,” she murmurs in my ear.

Around six a.m., Grace walks in, her hair a nest of birds.
“Morning is still and tender; waiting to draw breath,”

Grace says. She stops for a minute.
“Even River was motionless,” she flows.

A butterfly, drunk with birdsong, breakdances against the kitchen window.

§

Grace is wearing a yellow dress, her hair full of flowers.
Gravity is jumping up and down on the spring bed.

“Don’t be cruel,” I tell them. “All of this passes.”
But Grace dances and Gravity’s hair is like a candle flame.

“I slept for 12 hours last night,” Grace confesses,
“And I took a relaxing green bath,” Gravity follows.

The color of the sky has the shade of the unexpected.

§

Today ginger-haired Gravity has dyed her hair black.
Also, today heavy dark make up amplifies her eyes.

Grace, on the other hand, has gone home,
a big mansion with palm trees.

(They say the King never slept at night.
Gravity watched over him during the day.)

“'Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy',”

Grace, swiftly, interrupts, taking repossession
of her garden. “I was the last to see his will.”

It is known the King left her with nothing.



Ernesto Priego was born in Mexico City. He is the author of Not Even Dogs. Hay(na)ku Poems (Meritage Press, San Francisco, 2006) and And the Wind Did Blow... (Meritage Press, San Francisco, 2007). He lives in Finsbury Park, London.

 
 
 
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