print previewback JENNIFER FRANKLIN
Still Life with Gold
Nothing organic remains. Wooden caskets
cradle pomegranate beads, combs, earrings.
You are familiar with this ritual of adorning
flesh with ornaments that will outlast. Gold
diadems and crowns host two cicadas
and a bee. Untouched in plastic cases
they perch on gray velvet stands. The gods
the Greeks cherished, now cherish us,
our greedy stares and Protean desires. This
is what the earth chooses to preserve, what
it can’t use. Open tombs reveal strewn jewels
and dried fruit. You impose desire onto corpses
you can’t see. You love what you want them
to have been. This is just one version
of an afterlife. You leave to buy replicas
of bronze baubles that hung from each branch
of their bodies. You smell the faint aroma
of what they once parted their lips to taste. 
Annunciation, without Angel
June
Reading
about the Lost Children of Tuam
Still Life with
Gold