by Jennifer Franklin

‍ ‍February 11, 2025‍ ‍


Each year when the sharp
threat of snow
pierces me as I walk the dog,

I think of you. Of your impossible
words piled
on the desk waiting to be pressed

between the covers of your last
book, waiting
in your bedroom while you

fiddled with the gas. I refuse
to believe
this is what you wanted.

Certain he would find you—
save you
from the fire in your brain.

Unappreciated, you made him
what he was.
Wounded, abandoned with endless

childcare. Insatiable need
of babies
crying into the harsh morning light.

They take and take until
there is nothing
recognizable left. I know this can drive

you to a room full of weapons—
knives, flame, gas
until you think, in sleep-deprived

delirium that they are calling
offering oblivion—
a lover’s hand on your neck.

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Jennifer Franklin is the author of three poetry collections, including If Some God Shakes Your House (Four Way, 2023), finalist for the Paterson Prize and the Julie Suk Award. Her work has been commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum, and published in American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, “poem-a-day” on poets.org, and Poetry in Motion. She won a Pushcart Prize, a NYFA grant, and a CRCF Award. She is cofounder of Words Like Blades reading series.

by Jennifer Franklin

Fear fills my neighbors’ sunken eyes—
their mouths obscured by make-shift
masks. All week, contractors in hazmat

suits dig temporary mass graves
on Hart Island, where the first victims
of AIDS and abandoned disabled

children were stacked when nobody
wanted to think about how easy it is
to hide illness and imperfection.

The daffodils look old-fashioned
this spring, like ruffles on dresses
my mother forced me to wear

in grade school. My sick daughter
walks beside me, not knowing
the world is wounded. I prompt

her hands back to her pockets again
and again so she won’t touch anything
even in the park. For seventeen years,

her disease has kept us inside
our apartment more days than we
ventured out into the city. I used to think

of Bradbury’s “All Summer in a Day.”
This is worse. The sun shines
but we cannot go outside to feel it.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jennifer Franklin (AB Brown University, MFA Columbia University School of the Arts) is the author of No Small Gift (Four Way Books 2018) and Looming (Elixir 2015). Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Blackbird, Boston Review, New England Review, Gettysburg Review, Guernica, JAMA, Love’s Executive Order, The Nation, Paris Review, Plume, “poem-a-day” on poets.org, and Prairie Schooner. She currently teaches poetry in Manhattanville’s MFA program. She is co-editor of Slapering Hol Press and teaches manuscript revision at the Hudson Valley Writers Center, where she runs the reading series and serves as Program Director. She lives in New York City.