Esme Franklin /
April 10, 2019
‘Mus Maximus’ and ‘Venice’

About The Author

Esme Franklin

Esme Franklin holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College, and a BA from Bennington College. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Asheville Poetry Review, The Comstock Review, Fairy Tale Review, and others. She lives in New Orleans, LA.


Fairy tales, myths, and imaginative stories are what keep us toeing the edge—a place of limbo between what is and what seems. I take inspiration from mysteries, unknown elements, and obscure personae, to remind myself to think into different realities; realities that make us shiver, double-take, and belly-laugh. In writing this series of poems, I have tried to weave the bizarre and fantastical into the sublimely emotional; to create a space where a dog-man loves a rat-man, and gets away with it.