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Specter
1
Kindergarten
What else is she ever going to be
but one of the wind’s outgrown costumes
stuck in the swingset’s tangled chains
searching the halls of her huge purgatorial night
like she did in the Good Samaritan Hospital
when they took out her tonsils
shoulders capped now with sleet
knees creased like a supplicant’s
like pants on a hanger
accrual of all of the hover and swoop
no one quite believes in
2
Fifteen
only very ill children can see her
standing alone in the glare
of her heartbreaking nondescriptness
chocolate smears on the sides of her mouth
one more skinny girl astray from herself
3
Haiku
two pocked oranges
one half cup of hot skim milk
gluttonous dinner
4
Body Mass
imagine running in place
with the door-open
oven on broil
Nikes no good anymore for outside
longjohns the dryer chewed up
bleached out sweats over that
then old boyfriend’s sweater then
catastrophically dirty down coat over that
ski cap and gloves ratty scarf knotted tight
kitchen door shut black and white TV
sound turned low so the neighbors
won’t figure it out
not yet knowing that once in a while
during hell week a frat pledge
dies from this
don’t stop imagining don’t give up
the imagining
5
aging olympic figure skater
spinning on one single knifepoint in time with
the Casio watch commercial’s trite jingle
perfect stiff smile velvet skirt
stitched back together a little too much
but lifting still in its old immodest wind
she used to be so so good
Apparition
Sometimes you visit bringing the lilacs’ stifle and chill
sometimes the earthworms’ benevolent gleam
sometimes you visit and all of my nights alone
harbor their dark as a fugitive
sometimes you visit and the never-swept dust
blossoms into brown chittering birds
and sometimes the gust of May lifts the gauzy hair
on the heads of old women
and sometimes you bring the bequests of November’s
rattling twigs
sometimes you come as a mother trying and trying
to nurse her gaunt infant
or you come as a hand placing baptismal snow
on a mountain to name its stillness
sometimes you place yourself under the pillow of
those who cannot fall asleep
sometimes you bring me a flask of tears
sometimes you show me the tombs of darlings
and you visit not because we fade into our nakedness
but because our clothes will not miss us
and you visit because soon enough you will
visit no more and nevertheless I will keep watch
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Frannie Lindsay’s sixth volume of poetry, THE SNOW’S WIFE, is forthcoming from Cavankerry Press in the fall of 2020. Her previous titles are IF MERCY (The Word Works, 2016), OUR VANISHING (Red Hen Press, Benjamin Saltman Award 2012), MAYWEED (The Word Works, Washington Prize 2009 Washington Prize), and LAMB (Perugia Prize, Perugia 2006).
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