Frannie Lindsay

TENEBRAE
July 8, 2015 Lindsay Frannie

Tenebrae

 

As grief begins taking up residence
I look to my greyhound’s whitened face;

to her deft, anatomical tongue
swooping my cheek as if nothing
has changed;

to her headlong
patience; her flanks no longer
huntress-muscled;

nails like the chipped keys
of a saloon piano;

and to the old, old
sun preparing the hallowed square
of her winter-day sleep.

Frannie Lindsay’s sixth volume of poetry, The Snow’s Wife was published by Cavankerry Press as part of their Notable Voices Series. Her other titles are If Mercy and Mayweed (The Word Works); Our Vanishing (Red Hen Press); Lamb (Perugia); and Where She Always Was (Utah State University Press). She has held residencies at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Millay Colony. She has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The American Poetry Review, The Yale Review, and many others, as well as The Best American Poetry and The Plume Anthology of Poetry. She is a past winner of the Missouri Review Prize.