Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2022, 158 pp.
Family Letters
Sheets of his stationery lay scattered on the floor.
A leather box rested with one corner dangling
Over the edge of the desk. There were fountain pens
With silver nibs and clean, thick sheets of paper,
Pens that had traced sweeping lines, the shape of words,
Of sentences etched onto the page, that began, “My Dear …”
And ended with an embrace, a signature, a point where
Words stopped, folded against each other. If I’d had
My grandfather’s handwriting, I’d also have used reams
Of paper and bottles of ink, worn out the nibs of pen
After pen, writing letters to be kept but lie unread
By those to whom they no longer mattered.
In my hand, though, pens have always wanted to escape,
The letters jerk, blot, or even collapse, each a jumble,
Something regrettable. My teachers told me
I should practice, but they never said why.
My parents are buried near an oak tree, next to the graves
Of my grandparents and my aunt. The stones are
Pink marble with blue veins running underneath
The inscriptions. My father’s parents are buried
Somewhere else. They died when he was still a child.
I don’t know their graves. But, I remember my
Father’s monologues as he shaved, the dog asleep
At the foot of the bed, my mother’s shout when my
Grandfather had a stroke, footsteps rushing downstairs.
I am older now than my mother was then, or my father.
I stood by my father’s pillows when he died almost
Thirty years later, in a room that used to be mine,
My books still on the shelves, the carpet the same,
The same armoire against the far wall, a television, a desk.
He was faced toward the ceiling, and whatever he saw
Was not the room where I stood and he waited.
My mother was in the bedroom on the other side
Of the house, unable to feed herself, walk, or use
A toilet. I don’t know what room she saw either, what
She remembered or had forgotten. We were, all three,
Unable to say anything then that mattered. Afterwards,
I found the boxes of papers, letters my grandfather
Wrote to my mother, letters my parents wrote to each other.
I sat on the floor of my mother’s dressing room,
Reading my grandfather’s studied hand, my mother’s
Cautious script, and my father’s large, scribbled lines,
But they told me nothing I didn’t know already.
My grandfather wanted my mother to return from France.
My father missed my mother, was somewhere on business,
His handwriting on hotel stationery. These letters still
Exist, somewhere in a box at the bottom of my closet.
I’ve never known what to do with them, what to write in reply.
The Ship of Theseus
On the windowsill in winter, a plastic jug half full of cider
Turning hard overnight, a wind that blows out feelings,
Candleflame gone dark, gone nowhere.
I went to college in an old hotel, wool carpet lining
The hallways, a fire-escape leading to the roof, a view
Of the mountains. The hotel was white, and the mountains
Were white. Yellow snowplows snailed their way
Toward Bethlehem and Littleton. We played chess
And talked about the Iliad, sat on the steps, drank brandy.
On the other side of the earth, the Vietnam War
Dragged on (Saigon hadn’t fallen yet), and Nixon
Was still president. You could hear the wind piling up
High drifts of snow, covering cars in the parking lot.
I was living that year with a girlfriend on the fourth floor,
A room that faced sunrises, pine, and maple. The neighbors
Could hear us making love in the morning while
It was still dark, a red handkerchief thrown over the lamp.
The radio station was in the basement and played
Billie Holiday or whatever the students who were up late
Requested. My friend, Tom, from back then, died last year,
And I’ve lost track of most of the others. Once, a card
Arrived from the girlfriend, apologizing but not
Saying why. On the envelope, she was careful not to write
A return address. I feel pretty much the same way.
Whoever we all were in 1973, we’re not anymore. Only
Our names are the same, for the most part, and a few
Embarrassing memories. We’re like that Ship of Theseus
Plutarch describes in Athens, each plank having rotted
And been replaced, the philosophers equally divided
Whether it was still the same ship.
On Tragedy
Loneliness is the very essence of tragedy….
Georg Lukács
Lukács says we want to feel at home in the world,
Or at least, want our loneliness to count for something.
Instead, we wipe grief off our shoes every time we come inside,
But an odor lingers, the hamper of clothes that should have been washed,
The moldy scent from behind the refrigerator. When the dog
Comes in, he brings with him a smell of rotting leaves.
Was there ever a before to this after? When you walk at night
In the rain, there are smears of color on black asphalt, stoplights and blinking signs,
Low clouds turned a dark orange by reflection, restaurants that have closed early.
Was it ever different? I will tell you a story.
It will be a story about a king because the problems of kings
Are different from my problems or yours. The king’s dinner is always prepared
By others and served by well-dressed footmen and polite maids.
Kings never wash their own dishes or clean under the bed or behind the couch.
Their concerns are invasions and crop failures, the curses of sorcerers,
Betrayals by greedy cousins. In the midst of such things, most
Care little for philosophy. Unlike the poets and scholars, they are
At home wherever they wander. Peasants, shopkeepers, even bankers,
Take off their hats and bow. A child with long curls rushes up with flowers,
Which the king will pass to an assistant with an indulgent smile.
In this story, the king thought nothing was wrong
Until the gods, who are believed to have created us for their entertainment,
Sent a horrible plague, a fever that killed whole families and caused the king’s
City to come to a stop. For the first time, the king did not feel at home.
A rumor surfaced, a kind of reasoning: if there is something wrong in the city,
There must be something wrong with the king of the city, for the king’s body
Is the body of the city. The priests could offer no help. Do they ever, in any story?
But an old prophet put it directly, told the king: “It’s your fault.”
For those of you who don’t already know this story, the king had killed his father without
Knowing that was his father and then married his mother without knowing
She was his mother, so he had children who were also his brothers and sisters,
And finally he recognized there was absolutely nothing he knew about anything.
The king who was no longer a king spent the rest of his life homeless
And blind as a red earthworm beneath the soil.
Tonight, when it’s raining and even the dog doesn’t want to go outside,
I think of that king who had felt perfectly at home for so long.
I think of his sister-daughters who travelled with him, whose names
No one wanted to speak. I like to believe that on a night like this
They would have found shelter and a bowl of soup, wine
To ward off the bone chill, the smell of wet wool, smell of pig shit
And oxen shit, the sour straw beneath their heads. And the king
Who was no longer a king? I imagine him staying up most of the night,
Which to him was now the same as day. He would have listened to the grunts
And snorts of the animals, to their sudden belches, their unembarrassed farts.
He would have been listening until he too fell asleep,
Trying to understand what language it was they were speaking.
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George Franklin’s fifth poetry collection, Remote Cities, and a dual-language collaboration with Colombian poet Ximena Gómez, Conversaciones sobre agua / Conversations About Water, were published last winter. Previous publications include: Solstice, Rattle, One, Cagibi, New York Quarterly, Salamander, Tar River Poetry, The Ekphrastic Review, and the anthology Sharing This Delicate Bread: Selections from Sheila-Na-Gig online 2016-2021. He practices law in Miami and teaches poetry workshops in Florida prisons.
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