For that second watch you steal
you’ll need a middleman
and God so made the world
that there are middlemen.

*

That Proudhon had a point
though he commits the crime
of maligning theft.

*

It took months of lurking
in the aisles of drug stores
but the first woman I married
was the fetching one I followed home
after watching her shoplift
an eyeliner and toothbrush.

*

The wealth of others is,
as my lawyers would say,
a mitigating circumstance.

*

There’s pleasure in knowing
so many people
confuse social security
with identity.

*

It’s not the chagrin of leaving
clues they use to convict you—
it’s suffering the sentence
of state support.