A Failed Coup
George Franklin
George Franklin es autor de dos poemarios: Traveling for No Good Reason (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2018) y un poemario bilingüe, Among the Ruins / Entre las ruinas, traducido por Ximena Gómez al español (Katakana Editores 2018), además de un folleto que publicó Broadsided Press (2019). Obtuvo una Maestría en Poesía de la Universidad de Columbia y un Doctorado en Literatura Inglesa y Norteamericana de la Universidad de Brandeis y sus poemas han aparecido recientemente en Into the Void, The Threepenny Review, Salamander, Pedestal Magazine, Cagibi, Twyckenham Notes y The American Journal of Poetry (próximo a publicarse). George Franklin es abogado, practica el derecho en Miami e imparte talleres de poesía en las cárceles del Estado de La Florida.
Sappho writes it’s midnight and she sleeps alone.
It’s midnight here as well, and we walk
Beneath the same stars, looking for some
Reassurance they can’t give us, that even
Sappho can’t give us. We spent all day
Watching the news. A mob attacked
The Capitol, that white acropolis,
To install the man they believed won,
Even if he didn’t win. There were gunshots.
People died. Now, frogs are croaking in the damp
Grass by the walkway, and I remember the
Jefferson Memorial in the spring, how fast
The Potomac swirled east, how planes came in
Over the river, the island where I used to go for walks,
That ugly statue of Teddy Roosevelt. But I know
I’m only cheering myself up. We knew things
Were bad, just not this bad: the girl from Knoxville,
Crying from tear gas, the one who said it was a revolution,
The voice of that Congresswoman crouched
In the gallery praying the same prayer over and
Over, Confederate flags carried down the aisles
By men in costumes or bare chested, broken glass,
A policeman screaming, crushed in a door, gunshots,
The same prayer over and over.
It’s midnight. We’re walking in the dark, along
A thick black line of asphalt pavement.
Like Sappho, we look at the stars.
