George Franklin
A Man Made of Stories
by George Franklin
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George Franklin practices law in Miami. Poetry & Pigeons: Short Essays on Writing was published by SheilaNa-Gig Editions in January 2025. A Man Made of Stories is his fourth full-length poetry collection forthcoming soon from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, complementing Remote Cities (2023) Noise of the World (2020) and Traveling for No Good Reason (winner of the Sheila-Na-Gig Editions manuscript competition in 2018). He has also authored the dual-language collection, Among the Ruins / Entre las ruinas (translated by Ximena Gómez and published by Katakana Editores, 2020), and a chapbook, Travels of the Angel of Sorrow (Blue Cedar Press, 2020). He is the co-translator, along with the author, of Ximena Gómez’s Último día / Last Day and co-author with Gómez of Conversaciones sobre agua / Conversations About Water (Katakana Editores 2019 & 2023).
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Someday
When our backs and legs are stiff in the morning and movement’s
Awkward, a hobbling gait to the left and right, and our hands are
Swollen with the ache that comes from grasping and missing,
The right hand forgetting what the Psalmist called its “cunning,”
When we forget what we swore to remember, nights
When the room slipped away from us, lips pressed hard against
Lips, your skin’s fabric beneath my hands’ clumsy touch,
When I strain to recall the soap smell of your neck on the pillow,
Your back’s warmth held against my chest beneath the covers,
Light cracking the shades, stubborn light—is this how
We’ll clutch at the world, at each other, at whatever desire meant?
Mi amor, what was it we desired, what we still desire?
When I want to fall asleep, I’ll pretend you’re next to me.
The Same Conversation
For the last week, the moon’s risen late,
Climbing over the shopping mall, the
Rooftops, old mango trees, the canal
Where the ducks are asleep and no breeze
Disturbs the water. Even at night,
It feels too hot to go for a walk.
The season’s first hurricane just turned
North before it reached us. The rumble
Of air conditioning units is
All that I hear except for someone’s
Television turned up too loud. It’s
A commercial, an automobile
Coming to a quick stop, someone’s voice
We can almost recognize. The dog
Sticks his nose deep in the grass, a smell
That he reads like a paragraph from
A Russian novel: Prince Andrey ate
Chicken by-products, corn, for breakfast.
Natasha squatted and peed for a
Long time by the stop sign. They were both
Unhappy with life in the suburbs.
You and I talk about politics,
Which these days is like talking about
The weather, something we are without
Power to change. We imagine life
In Colombia or Mexico
And consider how hard it would be
To move, how difficult to earn a
Living. Your sister and her wife are
Visiting Bogotá. They’re worried
How they’ll be treated at the airport
When they return, what kind of questions
They’ll be asked. Now, everything seems wrong.
Last winter, the geese didn’t fly south
In their long formations. They used to
Land on the roof sometimes, then fly off.
Now, it’s people we know who’re leaving.
