Another way to make sure that the suitor is
the penultimate suitor and not the ultimate one
is to pick the wrong person.
And so a number of poems here are about that phenomenon,
in one the writer is in love with the teacher.
And the epigraph of that poem is--
one of the epigraphs is the moment you meet a teacher,
you should leave the teacher and you should be independent.
And now, I've had to reverse that and make it
the moment you meet a student.
You should leave the student and you should be independent.
So this are some of my the jolly sonnets
or what's the word not jolly, but these
are syllabic sonnets in a sequence that
has a little narrative arc.
There are eight of them.
But one of them--
the sixth one is only the concluding couplet,
so that's a time saver.
And this takes a while to read, so you'll
be able to hear little pieces of the story.
But if nothing else, you can just
watch for these liminal places like windows and dunes.
This is a seaside poem.
"Sequence as Opposed to Series."
"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."