Posters of Juliette Greco, the Eiffel
Tower. A good French bistro in the Village,
Its cuisine by some oversight not yet
Widely known; all the more murmured over

No one but the prodigal returns.
Extravagance, the same as parsimony,
disguised a bent for pillaging oneself?

Unwrap the message hidden in a wound
Or a word: a branching spray of avowals, cut.

Beginning with a fundamental, which
Sounds tonic depths, then reasons up from there,
The will to truth parts company with prayer

The Wife to Potiphar

Regret his imprisonment? Yes! I wanted him dead.
But a month or two of Egyptian penal correction
Should serve the purpose. No, I don't miss him, not now.

Rumor, the homemade metamorphosis;
That with each telling modifies its key
Adjectives, its semicolons; that scales

Scores
               of scorpions
                                 honey-bright

      O for Orchard leads only
to Orchard Hill Miniature Horses,
      then Orchid Coiffeurs.

You dismiss the tiny, protesting fraction
back home, claim you've learned a nation

The poets have all told my story wrong
thought there was a well, and me out all alone.
The well was deep and so the rope was long.