Still, Flowers
Even today, with two new diagnoses,
(supposedly cured from the cancer
that almost killed me), I am still here.
I walk out of the doctor’s office,
with my bad news, into sun.
The spotted lantern flies are killing
maples and ailanthus all over the city
but someone has planted flowers
in the window boxes that line
my walk home from the pharmacy
that dispenses my daughter’s four
epilepsy drugs. Still, flowers open
and their petals withstand the wind.
I stop to memorize their shock of pink.
After reading that Flaco flew into a building and died
“to be / Assassin of a Bird
Resembles to my outraged mind
The firing in Heaven,
On Angels – squandering for you
Their Miracles of Tune –”
—Emily Dickinson
He lived in this neighborhood for almost a year.
I never spotted him in the wild but in photographs
he perches on water towers, fire escapes, and balconies.
I have not escaped my cage. Have not soared
above anything with abandon. Have not looked down
on grass or trees. Even if a vandal cut the mesh wire
of my enclosure, I wouldn’t leave. Love binds me
here as the walls close in and the tinny music
of the harp creates an intractable earworm.
In the middle of the night, I look out the window.
From this perch, I might have sighted him emerging
from a nap on an air conditioner or a terrace, to follow
a slow rat, thick with poison. I might have heard
a struggle as he swooped down to make a kill.
There Was a Time
After everything that has happened,
we can only agree on flowers.
If you were here, you would love
the huge hibiscus—each peach
flower closing for the evening—
folded like your fists when you sleep.
It’s hard to believe we lived
through those years of my treatment
when you slept in my bed mouth open
like a dead body waiting to be embalmed.
We haven’t slept under the same roof
in years. Now, when we spread
peach jam at your breakfast table,
we each strain for something
uncontroversial to say over the scent
of burnt toast on your apple green
plates. A robin perched on the branch
above the deck frightens the dog.
In a moment, it’s gone. There was a time
I would have picked up the phone
to tell you what happened but now
I can only send you a photo of the hibiscus.
Self-Portrait as Panel Painting
I am this tiny tabula
of a swallow, sharp-beak
like a silver sword,
curved claws, motionless,
iridescent, still wing.
Painted on wood over three
other paintings of birds—
a gold canary in a cage,
a nightingale out of sight
above a beech tree, consumed
by its own song, a finch
chained to a shelf, blinded.
A crackled palimpsest on cut
wood, bronze circle at the top
to put a nail through. Hang me
on the cabin wall. Don’t let me
remember the other birds beneath
thick paint. Don’t remind me
of the song that used to emerge,
unbidden from my small soft chest.
Jennifer Franklin is the author of three full-length poetry collections including If Some God Shakes Your House (Four Way Books, 2023), finalist for the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize. Franklin has received a Pushcart Prize, a NYFA/City Artist Corps grant, and a Café Royal Cultural Foundation Literature Award. Her work has been published in anthologies and journals including in American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, The Nation, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Society’s “Poetry in Motion,” and The Academy of American Poets “poem-a-day” series. With Nicole Callihan and Chenda Bao, she coedited Braving the Body (Harbor Editions, 2024). She teaches craft workshops at Manhattanville’s MFA program and 24 Pearl Street of the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. For the past ten years, she has taught manuscript revision at the Hudson Valley Writers Center, where she serves as Program Director.