Ode to an Inflatable Grecian Urn
by Julián Martinez
The one in a Wicker Park frontyard garden,
across from the dry cleaners, neon necktie in their storefront window
lit 24/7. The same block as the fingered message in sidewalk cement:
“I LOVE YOU FRANCESS.” You read it as ‘princess.’ I read it as ‘abscess.’
On the day we drove to pick up your sewing machines from the repair shop
and buy the Murakami for Jack’s birthday party. We passed it
walking from the café – it was Two Points Tuesday, the last week of their summer promotion.
You took pictures of it, in all its blue-and-white striped kitsch. You said
shoutout to the Greeks, for inventing something
that outlived them and would now outlive us
thanks to microplastics, marketability—
would live forever in a multi-colored planetary pile of rotted filth
like that Roc Marciano album cover, its title song in my head when I awoke
next to you that morning, sunbeams from the windowshade moving away from us.
Julián Martinez (he/him) is the son of Mexican and Cuban immigrants. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Cobra Milk, HAD, Maudlin House and elsewhere. His work has received The Society of Professional Journalists’ Mark of Excellence and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Find him online @martinezfjulian.