Doe eyed stilettos, willowy
swagger, ebullience with a beveled

Edge of Democracy, Brazilian doc,
got dumped right after marvelous

things I thought I might regret, did not,
did nothing, did what one does when one

does not, does naughtily, unknots
a throat during clouds in March

on a morning that a man lies sweetly,
unquietly, a man who is bad at lying

down the avenues I sauntered, the promenades
I tread, bragging about how close I was

to ghosting all the Frenchmen and Frenching
all the ghosts, to learning every

line up, ladies, this could be your last chance,
your fresh twist of fate, that soaring boulevard

of dreams too old to follow and life too calm
to dread, a sparkling path that curls around

croissants and crépuscules, a quick adieu
to reason and hair too thick to comb

the lost pages dog-eared with unbearable
precision, her mouth a long, cool j'adore

and her heart singing darkly

__

"Juliette Binoche" was born early lockdown, a few months after my interview with the canonical actor, published in the Los Angeles Review of Books in March 2020. I cribbed some of the lexis of the intro, and then let my mind--and the couplets--fly. My favorite Binoche performances are in Three Colors: Blue (1993), Code Inconnu, (2000), Caché (2005), and Let the Sunshine In (2017) though not in that order. But even in bad movies, she's worth watching.