Mother’s Body, November

by Frannie Lindsay

She can’t read his lips or feel even one
of his words in the palm of her ear,

yet she must wish he would
stop shouting, because

no one is going to come for her
cleaned up body until

the dinner carts fill again
with plates of stone cold turnips,

and the same few bees tire out
in the bald lilacs.

Frannie Lindsay's books are Mayweed  (Word Works Washington Prize); Lamb (Perugia); and Where She Always Was (Utah State University). In 2008, she won the Missouri Review Prize. Her poems have appeared in many journals, and on Poetry Daily and Writer's Almanac. She has received fellowships from the NEA and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.