Two Poems by George Franklin

Talking to Myself

It’s 9 p.m. I’m taking the dog
For an evening walk, up by the mall,
Then following the canal. The moon
Won’t rise till later, and the clouds streak
Like white chalk against an enormous
Black sky. This is one of the first nights
Of autumn. There’s a breeze, and my shirt
Isn’t sticking to my back. I should
Feel happy. I could be walking on
A sidewalk in Barcelona or
Madrid, Mexico City, Paris,
Or Bogotá—the air would touch
My face the same way. The headlights of
Cars would sweep across the darkened trees
In those cities just as they do here,
The car radios releasing a
Few notes of music before the night
Swallows them. I watch the red taillights
Until they disappear and think of
The things I could’ve done and didn’t,
The places I could have lived and been
A different person, worn a hat
Like my father’s—I wrote a poem
About that once, the gray fedora
He’d put on to go to the office.
I found it in his closet when he
Died. It smelled of hair tonic and sweat.
It’s sad how we leave these things behind.
They’re the poems everybody writes
And forgets about. They line the shelves
Of thrift shops, then reincarnated
Into other lives, start all over.
It’s strange to think that someone else wore
My father’s hat, that someone else’s
Fingers lifted it by the crown,
Tried it on, and pulled down the soft brim.
My closet is full of stuff like that,
Shirts Ximena gave me, my jacket
That reminds me of Spain, blue jeans, and
Shoes with worn-down heels, missing laces,
So many things that go unnoticed.
The dog has spotted a yogurt cup
In the grass and is fascinated.
I pull him away, and we walk down
The hill to the street and the narrow
Sidewalk we follow on our way home.

*

Raphael’s Skull

The smooth, white skull on Goethe’s desk
Did not, as he thought, belong to Raphael.
It was the skull of a man with a brain disorder.
The salesman must have lied. Who knows
The posthumous destiny of bones? Donne’s
Lovers buried together, he imagined dug up
To make room for one more recently dead
And hoped they’d be spared disturbance.
They probably weren’t.
                                             I look at the paintings
On my wall and think about the previous
Owners, how the portraits’ expressions
Never changed, no matter the scenes they
Saw and didn’t reflect, the seductions,
The arguments, how my grandfather fell
To the rug, his heart pausing unexpectedly,
How we ran for the small oxygen tank
And put the mask over his face—or the vases
That came from China by ship, crated,
Wrapped in paper, print that no one here
Could understand, and the books waiting
On my own shelves, impatiently I suppose,
Especially the ones that have gone unread.

My grandfather kept a fine-edged knife
For cutting the pages, thick ivory paper
With firm bindings. Southern humidity
And gas heat turned those bindings dry
And brittle. I mostly bought paperbacks
That yellowed within a decade or two.
Some had cost a quarter each from remainder
Tables, bookstore basements in Cambridge
Or New York. In Canto LXXXI, Pound
Remembers when “books cost a peseta,
Brass candlesticks in proportion.”
My parents lit candles at dinner on
Friday nights and recited a blessing.
I don’t remember if the candlesticks
Were brass. The past is an ossuary
Of broken things, books in dumpsters
Covered by garbage from restaurants,
Sauce gone rancid, debris from construction,
Demolition, copper pipes ripped out, taken
For scrap, luggage no longer fit to travel.

When my father died, we had an estate sale.
A pocketknife sold for a dollar, and his
Shirts fifty cents each. The dining room
Table and chairs, the blue sofa, the marble-
Topped table in the living room—they were
All gone by noon, and at six o’clock,
A man arrived with a truck to make an
Offer on everything else. I kept all sorts
Of things I should have left, porcelain
Plates—themselves made from bones
And white clay—fluted glasses, a pocket
Watch, and a soup tureen. All here to remind
Of things that aren’t.

*

George Franklin is the author of eight poetry collections, including A Man Made of Stories, and a book of essays, Poetry & Pigeons: Short Essays on Writing (both Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2025). Individual poems have been published in Nimrod, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, ONE ART, and New Ohio Review, among others. He practices law in Miami, is a translation editor for Cagibi, teaches poetry classes in Florida prisons, and co-translated, along with the author, Ximena Gómez’s Último día/Last Day.