Mary LeaderSequence As Opposed to Series
I This chapel (before electricity) Knows beauty of darkness in this image Because its photographer knows beauty Of black next to dim castings of glass when The sky stops at evening and the chapel Is darkening, candleless, lanternless. The wildness of the heart, seeking outlet, Increases in the dark and the presence Of God only makes it wilder, frantic To gush at last, just kissing, to orgasm. Like William Henry Fox Talbot, you buy Paper, and where he took photographs you Write poems. I have seen you in your top hat. I have seen your mouth: wide, sensual, tight. II I say to myself, Don't read his poem if It hurts you so. Don't sit, emporched, rocking, Reading a young man's poem as if It were yours, or, as if it were to you. 'You don't need an extra ache, my girl,' I Say to her: Young Lady. Old Woman. Neither. 'But--what he has done is so beautiful.' Yes but--you explode with future, too-- . . . Too. I'll write my best guess at the inlander's Dance on the beach: "Pipers and plovers and Further, pelicans, launch in a body Because I run." Distinct from the body Is the rim, so that the still shell can swirl, And the swirling surge can one, still, streak, make. III Why? To diffuse the intensity of Our second true meeting, we staged our third Outside, the whole time on the weather's verge, The salt-light. Less facile with language, we Let other wild things take on the stirring: That wind that kept sounding like rain, ravens. The sleek bee landing in his bottle of Orange juice distracted but did not stop him As he read his poem in the same husky Voice he uses to compose. And my turn: The black ant traversing my manuscript Distracted but did not stop me, nor did The other bee hovering, nor even His hand as he brushed the bee from my hair. IV He kisses Margaret. He knows when girls Want him to kiss them. He can tell. I want Him to, even though I am not a girl. Harpists need their fingertip calluses To stay hard; they can never go swimming. Here, where the stream runs over the manmade Dam, the ruin of a folly stands, limestone That would seem even colder next to his Soft skin. I pretend to say, 'I would like To be kissed here.' I feature his answer, 'Yeah? We should try it.' I'm old, old enough To be his mother. I've said, "I don't want Some mother/son configuration with You, William." He said, "Oh, you're not. You're not." V Later on to myself I "say" to him: 'Your device goes: Just as fall/winter are Every bit as pretty as spring/summer, In fact more so, so brunettes [like his 'you,' I.e. her] are every bit as pretty As blondes, in fact [his Margaret] more so. This is news?' At the time, I said to him, "You have got to start thinking in meters, Not syllables." His dedication to Her reads "These words are yours." Bullshit, they're his. Her words are what she [inanely] says. When We, for real, discussed his sonnet, he said "I stole that line from you." "Which?" That "'Across Your mouth.'" Listen, I was telling you: kiss me. VI How delicate--the matter between us, The issue, sweet--the tip of your penis. VII Why? Because this happens merely unto Air. You, I mean you, William. You write Yourself down between one sleep and the next For whom? Rain on your window, you see. Rain On your rooftop, I "see." I, Catholic, Willingly take your intellect to heart But . . . The bed in the other room, pauses. My streaking window's text I cast in words: "Hazelwood"; "last tracery of the last Chance I might ever want." I can't tell which You are. Ephemera? Recognizer? Don't you see that I long to fill you with Erections, that I gasp to behold you, Presbyterian, in pain of my own? VIII I wrote "it," I wrote: "It," wrote "It is too Painful"--I did not write "I never want To see you again"--I wrote "It." "It is Too painful to see you, right now." "I," he Wrote me back, "understand, I really do, I'm not upset." That was upsetting. Where Is your anger, Man? You have lost me, your Great and former mentor! He signed himself "Your friend," then first name, last name. Now when I Walk the dunes, or go downtown for errands-- The post office, the store--my reminder Goes: 'To avoid him will be hard but it Will help me the most.' Your rhythmic shoulders . . . He does not trip on curbs. He does not crash.
Mary Leader's book The Penultimate Suitor, in which this poem appears, was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2001. Her first book, Red Signature (Graywolf Press, 1997), was a selection of the 1996 National Poetry Series.
