The Gods Give Us Gifts to Groom Us
I was a girl when he first came
to me. He arrived from the city
in a chariot of light. His father
shopped for fresh produce. His mother
cooked for days, prepared
his favorite meals—his arrival
was a banquet. I sat across from him.
Silent, still as he recounted his life
in the city, teaching history to ballerinas
at the high school for performing
arts. He lied to them the way he lied
to me. A perfect mark, he knew all
I wanted was meaning—to understand
what I learned in books—hatred,
horrors of war. He promised
I would witness everything—plague,
pillage, floods, famine. He gave me
sight but not how to help. When
I wouldn’t let him do what he wanted—
he said no one would believe me.
The curse of women from the beginning
of time—telling the truth without being
believed. Then carted away. Caged.
Called mad.
Jennifer Franklin is the author of three full-length poetry collections, most recently If Some God Shakes Your House (Four Way Books, March 2023), finalist for the Paterson Prize in Poetry and finalist for the Julie Suk Award. Poems from her manuscript in progress, A FIRE IN HER BRAIN, have been published in American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, The Common, “poem-a-day” on poets.org, Poetry Northwest, and the Montreal International Poetry Prize Anthology. Her work has also been published in The Bedford Guide to Literature (Macmillan, 2024), Gettysburg Review, The Nation, Paris Review, “poem-a-day” on poets.org, Poetry Society of America’s Poetry in Motion and Prairie Schooner. She is the recipient of a 2024 Pushcart Prize, the 2024 Jon Tribble Editors Fellowship from Poetry by the Sea, a 2021 NYFA/City Artist Corps grant for poetry, and a 2021 Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation Literature Award. She is Poetry Reviews coeditor of The Rumpus and coeditor, with Nicole Callihan & Pichchenda Bao, of the anthology Braving The Body (Harbor Editions, 2024). Jennifer taught manuscript revision for over ten years at the Hudson Valley Writers Center and she now teaches privately and in the Manhattanville MFA Program and 24Pearl Street/Provincetown Fine Arts Center. For more information see jenniferfranklinpoet.com
The Marbled Sigh 