Lee Passarella
	Dante’s Confession      - after Inferno, Canto V   I’ve heard the fair sex sometimes feign that sweet paroxysm Eve invented in the Garden, after she “did eat” and she’d learned the fleshly arts.   It’s a kindly meant deception, taking into account the way to a man’s heart is really through that huge and tumid and God-forsaking ego of his (the grandest organ he’s got about him!), instead of through a lesser organ, as some report.   Well, it’s all a game anyway, Lord help us….   And so it was that I concocted my gentle little ruse for Francesca’s sake, my girlish sham demise—in short, my famous swoon:   a tribute meant for her who brought death into the world and would now give a world if she could die, down to her soul,   poor child.