Frannie Lindsay

The Barn
December 14, 2015 Lindsay Frannie

The Barn

 

No one just Mary

whose dreams are unspecial as pigeons

and who never went to school

keeping the secret in her own mud heart

safe there in her handmade heart

after the huge neutral wingedness

scatters the hay and flurries up

all the hay-colored moths after

each of her fingers blossoms from trembling

though she wishes it wouldn’t

though she wishes she could go back

to her sad easy chores

to the ache in her shoulders

she cannot get rid of

and that she could ignore

the summoning in response to her

summoning

Frannie Lindsay’s sixth volume of poetry, The Snow’s Wife, was released in 2020 from Cavankerry Press. Her awards include the May Swenson Award, the Perugia Prize, the Benjamin Saltman Award, the Washington Prize, The Missouri Review Prize, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, and numerous periodicals such as The Yale Review, The Atlantic Monthly, Plume, Under a Warm Green Linden, and Field. She teaches workshops on the poetry of grief. She is also a classical pianist.