Franz Douskey
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  SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:    
   
​   The Nation

   The New Yorker
   Georgia Review
   Rolling Stone
   Yankee Magazine
   Down East 
   Minnesota Review
   New York Quarterly
   Chautauqua Review
   Chrysalis Reader 
   Puerto Del Sol
   Callaloo

   Caprice
   American Literary Review
   Yellow Silk
   Puerto del Sol
   Baseball Hall of Shame (Simon & Schuster)
   Baseball Diamonds (Doubleday)
   Sports Collectors DigesT
   University of Georgia Press and Inland Book Series
   Cavalier
   Arizona State University

   Denver Quarterly
   Grit
Picture

Metamorphosis

Picture
The river is lined with the voices of peepers.
Here it is, Spring again, although a few weeks ago
I wouldn’t have bet against my blood turning arctic cold in New England rivers.

The days have run past us like cheap souvenirs,
leaving so much we could have done to derail the world.

But none of this is tragic or worth a moment’s lament.
I’m grateful for the gift of another Spring.

There are no remedies for the human propensity for
self-annihilation, so I rejoice when I see the first Amaryllis.
When I can, I turn over the earth and inhale its
heady odors: decay transformed into growth.
Even worms are amorous beneath the deep grass
as the planet fills and flows.

The night vibrates with the intense burning of stars above the evergreens
In the morning, butterflies improvise.

The shadow of a bee lowers over a tulip, and in the still air
I hear a million times a second motionlessness of a hummingbird.
                                                               
- Franz Douskey

Testify: the Weather of Marriage

Picture
We live in our own climate, some nights in separate hemispheres.
What keeps us going is our incompatibility:
you with your twelve generations of New England winters,
and me with wandering ancestors,
unsettled by wars, until no one can remember the original
spelling of our family name.

Your family albums are neatly dated, filled with picnics and church functions.
My side has torn photos of survivors of wild voyages from Guiana to Haiti,
people who look uncomfortable in shoes.
                                                                                                      
It was easy for our friends to say we didn’t have a chance,
our emotional climates so different. 
You, cool as butter, and me, the hot knife;
incompatibles who work well together
in the dark, the way our copper kettle sings all night, on top of our stove.
                                                                                
-Franz Douskey
(photo by Bob Cato, 1984)