George Franklin
George Franklin practices law in Miami. Remote Cities is his third full-length poetry collection with Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, complementing 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).
Narcissus Redux
Squirming within their retinas to avoid
What’s mirrored on the water’s filmy tension,
Two eyes drawn close to his return his vision,
Remind him of two eyes he’d thought destroyed.
His sudden wish to see the pool’s life scatter,
Imaged on that smooth-cheeked, rippling face,
Is granted by his hand; the clouded surface
Splashes its banks, frightening off an adder,
While new-hatched minnows thrash down out of view
With green and silver gestures through the algae.
He shivers at the sight’s identity,
Absorbed in how again his “I” turns “You,”
And though he knows the outcome, can’t resist
Watching himself, bending to kiss, be kissed.
Conjugations
Mi amor, outside I can hear rain
Dripping from the gutters on the roof
In the morning, there’ll be a puddle
On the asphalt, and ducks will
Leave mierda by the walkway.
But now, there’re just trees
Blocking the neighbors’ lights,
Clouds fumbling their way
Across the night sky. It’s hard
To see the clock without my glasses,
But I’m sure it’s late. My lips
Brush hesitantly against
Your spine, your neck.
I don’t know much Spanish, but
I whisper a few words, simple ones:
Te quiero, te deseo, te toco, te beso.
Picking Favorites
(winner of the 2023 Yeats Poetry Prize from the W. B. Yeats Society of New York)
We’re not supposed to pick favorites.
Whether it’s a favorite child, favorite pet (now deceased),
Or favorite time when you went to bed early
And the radio played all the right music—you’re
Not supposed to think this way. How will
All the other nights seem if you do? They won’t have
Disappeared. You’ll still remember them, the holding,
Touching, her lips, yours. You’re supposed to say that all
Those nights are equally great, that each child is special,
That your dog the vet sedated with the first shot, then
Killed with the other, was loved no more or less than
The dog after or before, that each house or apartment
Where you lived has been the dream home you
Always wanted. Get it straight, you’re supposed to lie,
To everyone else, to yourself too. Even if you say
You treat each child the same, there are moments
You’re closer to one or the other. Sometimes, of course,
You wonder if you haven’t failed them all, in different ways—
Times you shouldn’t have gotten angry so easily, how
You should have said “Great!”—with conviction—when one
Chose a class in Iranian film over Shakespeare or another
Gave up his scholarship. In Chronicles, David gets into
Trouble for counting the people. It makes sense.
There are things you really don’t want to know, like
How many days you’ve been alive or how many
You’ve got left. Picking favorites is probably
Like that too. Unlucky. There was the morning in April
When you first walked around Venice by yourself or the night
You and Ximena sat by Biscayne Bay, looking
At the lights from the causeway, the occasional boat
Passing on the water. Don’t start counting times like that.
Don’t try to remember them either. That way,
They’ll stay somewhere inside you, unchanged. You
Can’t help it though, You remember how the sidewalks
Dipped in Roma Norte where driveways met the street,
How you had coffee and talked about Lorca. Don’t think
Like that. In a little over a month, you’ll go back to Mexico,
Order tacos again at El Califa, and Ximena will make fun
Of your dreadful Spanish, and you’ll laugh too. That night
Will be perfect, just like all the others.
