No, this is not exactly what it purports to be.
The Stalin of my title is not that 20th century ruler of the USSR.
Rather, he is a young man, alive now, in Mexico City who
Came up to me after a reading and asked me
To sign his book. I confess, his name surprised me,
And I asked him to repeat it. He did, and I dutifully
Dedicated the book to him. Afterwards, I imagined that
His father had been a party member and named him
Stalin in a moment of pure hope that his newborn
Son would change the world, that he would foment a fierce
Unbending revolution, end the suffering of the poor and
Punish the rich, the drivers of American and European cars,
The people to whom tacos are “street food.” But fathers
Often get it wrong. An infant’s face can’t tell you much
About the future. I would bet money this Stalin is a poet himself,
A reader of lyrics, a romantic moved by the way words
Can touch each other, innocently, the way a woman
And a man walking on the wide concrete outside
The Palacio de Minería might look up at the rooftops
And then back down toward the pigeons, and down
Farther still to the carved stones and Aztec sacrifices resting
Undiscovered, so many meters beneath the street.
What novels are you reading, Stalin? What films do you like?
And what possessed you to buy my poemario and ask me
To sign it? Perhaps you turned down the wrong hallway
At the bookfair and heard my friend Omar Villasana
Announce the reading was about to start, or you saw those
Huge windows in the salon, wide open, their curtains
Flapping like white sails or birds’ wings. Maybe you just
Needed a place to sit. The corridors and the long
Staircases of the Palacio are exhausting. And the book?
Did you read it? I’m embarrassed that I didn’t ask you more
About yourself and write more on that title page. By now,
You’re likely working or studying at a university,
And the book I signed—with its poems for Ximena and the one
About my father’s orchids—is forgotten, wedged tightly on
Your shelf, between Lenin’s critique of imperialism
And Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks.
fifth poetry collection, Remote Cities (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), and a dual-language collaboration with Colombian poet Ximena Gómez, Conversaciones sobre agua/Conversations About Water (Katakana Editores), were released in late 2022. Recent publications include: Rattle, One, Cagibi, New York Quarterly, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Tar River Poetry, The Ekphrastic Review, and the anthology Sharing This Delicate Bread: Selections from Sheila-Na-Gig online 2016-2021. Franklin practices law in Miami and teaches poetry workshops in Florida prisons.
Author’s website: https://gsfranklin.com
