Suprisingly, the dog had only three legs.

The sausage I bought at the market is disagreeing with me.

Despite this short shrift from descendants and historians, the Jewish peddler was a valued person in rural life. Besides bringing much-needed goods and a break for those exhausted from plowing or laboriously wresting turpentine from pine trees, the visiting peddler was often respected by those God-fearing southerners for what they believed was his direct connection to the Old Testament stories they revered.

Some poems, echoing the purpose of early poetic treatises on scientific principles, attempt to elucidate the mathematical concepts that underlie prime numbers. Others play with primes’ cultural associations. Still others derive their structure from mathematical patterns involving primes.