Pants

by Frannie Lindsay

I want a pair of rose-colored corduroy pants
like my father’s that I can wear
day after day, the wale gone
smooth as a girl’s cheek against
each knee, the waist loose, gnawed
in four places by rusting suspenders
that I can’t work anymore
by myself, while I ache and wait
in my Lazyboy rocker, big-print book
sprawled flat, spine down in my lap as I close
the red, red eye of my face.

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.