None of them are left anymore, the people who
Came to my parents’ cocktail parties, the ones
Who drank Wild Turkey on the rocks or Johnny
Walker Red, who mixed ginger ale with whiskey
And told stories I could overhear. Some when they
Fell, made more noise than others, so the whole
Neighborhood knew, but some fell quietly, the way
They wanted to fall, so that almost no one
Noticed they had fallen. Their television sets
Stayed on for days as all the constellations
Swung in the sky as though nothing had happened.
George Franklin is the author of Traveling for No Good Reason (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), a bilingual collection, Among the Ruins / Entre las ruinas (Katakana Editores), and a broadside, "Shreveport" (Broadsided Press). He is also the winner of the 2020 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize. His individual publications include: Into the Void, The Threepenny Review, Salamander, Pedestal Magazine, Cagibi, and The American Journal of Poetry, and poems are forthcoming in The Woven Tale Press Magazine. He practices law in Miami, teaches poetry workshops in Florida state prisons, and most recently is the co-translator, along with the author, of Ximena Gómez's Último día/Last Day (Katakana Editores).