Lehman: Have you written a noir poem? Lummis: Here's one.
Femme Fatale
It’s a crime story she’s in:
betrayal and larceny, few clues.
Someone stole what she lived for,
made off like a thief in the night
or high noon. What shall she do?
This: slide a heel on each foot
and set out, snapping at each step.
The man she loves smiles
from the covers of glossy and
starstruck drugstore magazines.
Looks like he’s wrapped his movie,
dropped his wife on a Frisian Island
and is flying his girlfriend to St. Tropez.
The men who love her finger coins
in the stale linings of their front pockets,
and whimper What’s your name?
The job she wanted went
to the man who tells the truth
from one side of his mouth, lies
from the other: a bilingual.
The job she got lets her answer
the questioning phone all day.
Her disappointment has appetite,
gravity. Fall in, you’ll be crunched
and stretched thin as Fettuccine. Watch
out for her, this woman, there is more
than one.
That woman with you, for instance,
checking herself in the mirror
to see where she stands—
she’s innocent so far, but someone
will disappoint her.
Even now you’re beginning to.
Even now you’re in danger.
-- Suzanne Lummis
(from In Danger (Roundhouse Press/Heyday Books)
Click here for other recent noir features we have posted on Sundays since July 2019.
still a classic
Posted by: lally | October 28, 2019 at 04:33 PM
Thanks and gracias, Lally!
Posted by: Suzanne Lummis | October 29, 2019 at 05:55 AM
Deadly Kisses
Once we took things lightly
Pacific Daylight kept us edgy
Waves from China lent their dull applause
Prisoner of the house in Malibu
Someone’s reading over my shoulder
Their shadow strongarming the room
The blue capsules dissolve quickly in water
Inducing ceaseless dreams of Tiresias
Blindly seeking the Great Whatsis
Returning eternally to this
A gunshot pirouetting down a rifle barrel’s rifling
Hornet’s buzz of aether in our ears
m. shepler 6/25/18
Posted by: Michael Shepler | October 29, 2019 at 06:51 PM