Frannie Lindsay


Ferris Wheel Elegy


And with a lurch that worries no one,
the dented Ferris wheel loops
like a mournful drunk

under the sweep of the oak that loves
being old. I have needed an unshiny place
where I can think,

so I climb aboard,
and Pinky, the sour old codger with no front teeth,
refuses my dime,

for I am this night’s sole traveler,
and my feet brush the dear pocked leaves
each time my little blue gondola

rocks and rustles through them
and out over stars I will not see again.

 

photo: Milton Bevington

Frannie Lindsay is the author of six books of poetry, most recently The Snow’s Wife, published in 2020 by CavanKerry Press. Her poems have also appeared in American Poetry Review, The Harvard Review, The Yale Review, Plume, The Adroit Journal, Poet Lore, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Field, The Missouri Review, and many others.

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