Sequence as opposed to series

I

This chapel (before electricity)

Knows beauty of darkness in this image

Because its photographer knows beauty

Of black nearest to dim castings of glass when

The canopy of heaven stops at evening and the chapel

Is darkening, candleless, lanternless.

The wildness of the heart, seeking exit

Increases in the dark and the neighborhood

of God only makes it wilder, frantic

To gush at last, just kissing, to orgasm.

Like William Henry Fox Talbot, you purchase

Paper, and where he took photographs you

Write metrical compositions 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 piece of poetry if

It hurts you in like manner Don't sit, emporched, rocking,

Reading a young man's metrical composition as if

It were yours, or, as if it were to you.

'You don't ne an extra ache, my girl,' I

Say to her: Young Lady. of advanced age Woman. Neither.

`But-what he has done is for a like reason beautiful.'d.,

Yes but-you discharge with future, too- . . Too.

I'll write my best gues at the inlander's

Dance upon the beach: "Pipers and plover and

Further, pelicans, launch in a material part

Because I run." Distinct from the material part

Is the rim, for a like reason that the still shell can swirl,

And the swirling wave can one, still, streak, make.

III

Why? To diffuse the intensity of

Our next to the first true meeting, we staged our third

Outside, the whole time upon the weather's verge,

The salt-light. Les facile with language, we

Let other wild things take upon the stirring:

That wind that kept sounding like rain, ravens.

The silky bee landing in his bottle of

Orange juice distracted on the other hand did not stop him

As he read his metrical composition in the same husky

Voice he uses to put together And my turn:

The black ant traversing my manuscript

Distracted on the other hand did not stop me, nor did

The other bee hovering, nor level

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 mention one by one I want

Him to, smooth though I am not a girl.

Harpists ne their fingertip calluses

To stay hard; they can not at any time go swimming.

Here, where the stream move swiftlys over the manmade

Dam, the ruin of a foolishness stands, limestone

That would appear even colder next to his

Soft skin. I sham to say, 'I would like

To be kissed here.' I feature his answer,

'Yeah? We should make experiment of 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 upon to myself I "say" to him:

`Your device goes: Just as fall/winter are

Every bit as bonny as spring/summer,

In fact more thus so brunettes [like his 'you,'

Le her] are each bit as pretty

As s in fact [his Margaret] more for a like reason

This is news?' At the time, I said to him,

.You have got to start thinking in meter

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 poem 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 solely unto

Air. You, I mean you, William. You write

Yourself down between individual sleep and the next

For whom? Rain upon your window, you see. Rain

On your rooftop, I "see" 1 Catholic,

Willingly take your intellect to heart

But The bed in the other sweep pauses.

My streaking window's body I cast in words:

"Hazelwood"; "last tracery of the last

Chance I might at any time want." I can't tell which

You are. Ephemera? Recognizer?

Don't you diocese 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 not at any time want To see you again"-I wrote "It." "It is

Too painful to diocese 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 missing me, your

Great and former mentor! He signed himself

"Your friend," then first name, last name. Now when I

Walk the dune or proceed downtown for errands

The column office, the store-my reminder

Goes: `To avoid him will be hard on the other hand it

Will help me the most" Your rhythmic shoulders

He does not trip upon curbs. He does not crash.

MARY LEADERS work The Penultimate Suitor, in which this piece of poetry appears, was published by the University of Iowa Pres in 2001 Her first work Red Signature (Graywolf Press, 1997) was a selection of the 1996 National metrical composition Series. photograph by Jackie Kern Heigle

Copyright World metrical composition Incorporated Nov/Dec 2001

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