Jennifer Franklin
Jennifer Franklin has published three poetry collections, including If Some God Shakes Your House (Four Way Books, 2023), finalist for the Paterson Prize and Julie Suk Award. Poems from A Fire In Her Brain have been published in American Poetry Review, The Bennington Review, Poetry Northwest, and “poem-a-day” on poets.org. Her work has been commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum, and published in The Paris Review, The Nation, Bedford Guide to Literature, and Poetry Society of America’s “Poetry in Motion.” She won a Pushcart Prize, a NYFA grant, and CRCF Award. She teaches in Manhattanville’s MFA program, & her online workshops. Visit her online at jenniferfranklinpoet.com
Queen of Night, 3 am
I keep vigil with the seventy stems we pulled
from the dry ground at the tulip farm across the bridge.
Alone, I watch them open to the room, cast shadows
on my tables and desk—Lasting Love, Ruby Velvet,
Wild Blue Heart, Triumph, Burning Flame,
and the black-purple—Queen of Night. They know
my secrets—hold them in their wide cups. Every vase
and pitcher, full. No empty surfaces, no room to move
without the tulips watching. I cannot sleep while
they breathe beside me. Only the tulips know me
and what I was meant to do. What I have not done.
I will never be free from their watchful gaze. If I leave
the room, they will discuss me—all my failures and flaws.
All my shortcomings and sins. They see everything,
remind me how the learned men in their brick buildings
praised me before I was betrothed and babied. Before
I was bound and bullied, bowed, burdened, and burned.
Before, before, before. The tulips know the whole story.
They don’t need the details I told the strangers who ferried
my daughter and me through the traffic of the city. No,
I can hide nothing from them. They know the color
of my weakness, the shade of my pettiness. They know
which of them matches the texture of my jealousy. The tulips
have always known the tenor of my tender and terrible heart.
