I.

I’ve decided to retitle this poem

“The Conception of a 1943 Novel

Called Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs.”

II.

As lithe as a Cocteau line drawing,

Mettray’s cock of the walk’s con-

cocting Divine, Mimosa II, oh, all

his darling peacocks, who’ll sashay

from their cocklofts and swan down

Montmartre streets till cockcrow in

a flowery, cockeyed cock tale.

Joel Allegretti is the author of, most recently, Platypus (NYQ Books, 2017), a collection of poems, prose, and performance texts, and Our Dolphin (Thrice Publishing, 2016), a novella. He is the editor of Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books, 2015). The Boston Globe called Rabbit Ears “cleverly edited” and “a smart exploration of the many, many meanings of TV.”