Jennifer Franklin

Memento Mori: Northern White Rhinos
June 24, 2022 Franklin Jennifer

Memento Mori: Northern White Rhinos

 

They are grey, big as boulders,
gentle as the grass they spend
the whole day grazing. The only two
left of their kind, mother and daughter—
they live under armed guard
in a Kenyan sanctuary,
after spending their life caged
in a Czech zoo.
Unaware of their doom,
they pass their last days eating
and napping. Each time they lower
their heavy bodies down to rest—
they sleep, tusks touching. Love,
what do any of us have but this?

Jennifer Franklin is the author of three poetry collections, including If Some God Shakes Your House (Four Way Books, 2023), finalist for the Paterson Prize and the Julie Suk Award. Her work has been commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum, and published in American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, “poem-a-day” on poets.orgThe Nation, and Poetry Society of America’s “Poetry in Motion.” She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a NYFA/City Artist Corps Grant, the Jon Tribble Editor’s Fellowship, and a Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation Award in Literature. She is cofounder and cohost of the online reading series “Words Like Blades” which pairs mentors and their mentees. Her new manuscript, A FIRE IN HER BRAIN, is a series of epistolary poems to Virginia Woolf, Lucia Joyce, and Sylvia Plath. She has been teaching manuscript revision workshops for over a decade and she also teaches in Manhattanville’s MFA program, Poets House, The Frost Place, and 24 Pearl Street.