Mary LeaderLinen Repeatedly Folded
I am an old woman bare to the waist with red orange flowers in her hair It may be possible to deconstruct them fruitfully I am A little girl but my present tense is a globe I am a little girl bare to the waist with red orange flowers in her hair What luck to be talking early I am an old woman as you know but I am almost finished with the parallels Right now in my bed is a shy ruddy girl I see two graybeards of about the same height walking at the same pace Together coming to see me but I seem to have concluded that I am almost done with the parallels Swans and a stag in the stream near the English village called Privett So strange to me I barely say a word Nor walk the herb-edged path to reach the Magen David design Nor touch the stele on which it is carved Nor be offered the wine you buy to warm another woman's bloodstream My present tense is not nebulous or noncommittal but I feel no glimmer of what it will be like when next I have clarity The sun bounces blinding off a butter-knife blade I am bare to the waist without red orange flowers simple enough Soon now the first cold days will come coughing Like the man on Liebigstrasse with acne scars and tuberculosis I had not understood before that in the context of opposites I want to be Well let me back up I only know I mean to go farther Will you also drop the negative valence with which trim is charged I want to show you what happens when trim is operative In the landscapes again the patches are present on the ground Which is tilted up toward the eye rendering perspective suppressed I agree with you that Paysage de Champrovent is particularly fine Here is where I am feeling the pinch of e-mail You are nodding or shaking your head quizzical or bored patient or not I have seen you both of each of these A figure is like a doll a chesspiece like a candlestick in Balthus or the cat Therefore there is much more room The ages have this as their provinces surely The way a mother holds a baby incorporated into a breathlessly long series So I am after suppressing the cult of the individual I am sorry in different hands As you said the old woman and the little girl being brought into proximity Near but not identical Intersecting triangles identical pieces in opposite positions interlocking I am still confused about it and still involved with the parallels But my present tense is becoming a globe I can only hope that the amber pendant I ordered will arrive in time The sun with its saber is poised Rose Steinberg is my opposite name
Mary Leader began writing poems in the midst of a career as a lawyer. Her most recent book, The Penultimate Suitor (Iowa, 2001), won the Iowa Poetry Prize. The present poem is from a manuscript in progress, called A Readinesse of Matches.
