GEORGE FRANKLIN

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

Speaking of Love

Speaking of love only gets more difficult.
The words slip out of my hands like a plate I’m

Rinsing and break against the tiles in white
Jagged shards and slivers. They cut my fingers

When I try to pick them up. Even the phrase
“Fall in love” implies an accident, maybe even

A mistake—a tightrope walker slipping, wavering
For how long in the air, as though a breeze

Might set him right again? But it doesn’t.
I’ve never thought our bodies were immortal, and

I’m afraid to calculate my years or yours. That cold
Math belongs to time, not me. I only slide my

Hands along your back, your side, and move
My arm inside your own, my lips pressing against

Your shoulder and your neck. The crowd looks up,
Silent with anticipation. I take a step.

George Franklin practices law in Miami and teaches poetry workshops in Florida state prisons with Exchange for Change. His poems have been most recently published in The Wild Word, B O D Y, Salamander, Matter, Scalawag, Sheila-Na-Gig, Gulf Stream, Rumble Fish Quarterly, Twyckenham Notes, Rascal, and Amsterdam Quarterly, and translated into Spanish in Alastor, Nagari, and Revista Conexos.  New work is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review and Cagibi, and a bi-lingual edition of his poetry translated by Ximena Gomez will appear soon from Katakana Editores.

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