Gerald So has done it again with another great collection of Noir Poetry in THE LINE UP #4.
Reed Farrel Coleman drives home the question of why do we have poems on crime. "The answer is just beneath the surface. I've heard it said many times by veterans of war, by cops, by firemen, surgeons, that they never felt more alive than when death was close at hand. Humans are never more human or less human than when mortality is on the line."
Poetry puts the reader right on the line. It is a balancing act where the slightest misstep drops the poet into the abyss. The poet is at greatest risk here. There is no safety net to break the fall of the poet. It is extremely personal, visceral and alive.
Each of the following poems (found in THE LINE UP #4) reaches deep into each of us and rattles our core. Each of these wordsmiths is a master at telling about the pain, the suffering, and the loss of being human. As much as we wish that we could avoid the human condition, we cannot. These wonderful poets allow us to be voyeurs to a crime, some petty, some horrific, but all incredibly human. Brutality, inhumanity and vengeance boil over in these poems. Read them and be human. Feel.
I suppose one of the greatest poetic injustices that struck all of us in 2010 is the loss of David Thompson. He is remembered on the last page of THE LINE UP: Poems on Crime.
Here several of the poets read their work HERE.
Reed Farrel Coleman
Slider, Part 7
He remembered.
First in the woods outside Kiev
the bodies-in-waiting,
kneeling at the edge of the trench.
Some cried.
Some begged.
None prayed that he could hear.
Mostly they were silent.
Then the
pop pop pop pop pop
of the Lugers and Walthers
and with each bullet
the metal metamorphosis of human beings
into falling lumps of meat.
Then the quicklime
the dirt
more bullets
more bodies
more quicklime.
Layers and layers
like a trifle.
David Corbett
Bargain
Since we met, fewer insects die.
Today (for example) you were gone
but a fat green fly hammered
blind against the window —
so I cracked it open and off he went:
tumbling wind, sunblue sky.
And last night you were out with the girls, but here
a brown moth scurried hot inside the lampshade —
I cupped my hand, nursed it
all the way downstairs, through the den,
cracked the door open: a tiny dark
flutter whirling toward the porch light.
Before only wasps survived —
menacing hang, throbbing wings,
hard and sleek and all that shiny black.
Her name? Ask the law. Ask her mother
or read the papers from that day
about the man in the shiny black Jag
and his eight-year-old daughter.
He'll be alone, they told me.
One more lie in a hive of lies,
buzzing inside me for years now
like the things I tell myself to
bargain off the ghost that hovers
just a little behind in the mirror.
The face I can’t forget because
she wasn’t meant to be there at all.
Nine years back, that was.
Turned a leaf, walked away, started fresh.
(Cut loose, actually — no longer much good at the thing.)
Then you came along. You.
So good, so wise, so blind.
Even unknowing, you taught me
the proper weight of things:
fate against fat chance,
in-the-palm-of-my-hand against through-my-fingers,
the smallest life against my own.
Worse, yours.
There’s the machinery, I think too much —
can hear the blood hissing through
my brain as I reframe every angle —
sucker’s pride, schemer’s luck,
the rancid taint in a loving wish,
the entomology of ghosts and
the constant scuttering nearness of:
She has not come home.
She might never.
Laura LeHew
The Organized Offender
Little known outside his home country, Ted Bundy has an
absolutely personal and unique vision. This exhibition features
nearly all 30 of his works spanning the career of one the most
touted serial killers of the 20th century including pop-up images of
the 1978 abduction and murder of Kimberly Diane Leach,
showcasing never before seen photos of his electric chair Florida
execution. Ted was frequently described as charming, charismatic,
intelligent and articulate; though he is perhaps best known for
ligature strangulations while raping his subject. Worthy women,
pre-selected, and lured by a fake injury. He also created a masterful
murderous co-ed rampage. It is frequently said that Ted’s spiritual
oneness and virtuosity came from his feeling the last breath leave
the victims’ bodies. The radical separation of form and content,
conceals and belies the seriousness and complexity of his
art.
Charles Harper Webb
Prayer for the Man Who Mugged My Father, 72
May there be an afterlife.
May you meet him there, the same age as you.
May the meeting take place in a small, locked room.
May the bushes where you hid be there again, leaves tipped with
razor-blades and acid.
May the rifle butt you bashed him with be in his hands.
May the glass in his car window, which you smashed as he sat
stopped at a red light, spike the rifle butt, and the concrete on
which you’ll fall.
May the needles the doctors used to close his eye, stab your pupils
every time you hit the wall and then the floor, which will be often.
May my father let you cower for a while, whimpering, “Please don’t
shoot me. Please.”
May he laugh, unload your gun, toss it away;
Then may he take you with bare hands.
May those hands, which taught his son to throw a curve and drive a
nail and hold a frog, feel like cannonballs against your jaw.
May his arms, which powered handstands and made their muscles
jump to please me, wrap your head and grind your face like
stone.
May his chest, thick and hairy as a bear’s, feel like a bear’s snapping
May his chest, thick and hairy as a bear’s, feel like a bear’s snapping
your bones.
May his feet, which showed me the flutter kick and carried me miles
through the woods, feel like axes crushing your one claim to manhood
as he chops you down.
And when you are down, and he’s done with you, which will be soon,
since, even one-eyed, with brain damage, he’s a merciful man,
May the door to the room open and let him stride away to the
May you — bleeding, broken — drag yourself upright.
May you think the worst is over;
You’ve survived, and may still win.
Then may the door open once more, and let me in.
Ken Bruen
Funeral: Of The Wino
Blame it on
an intuition
I hadn’t heard
and certainly
would nigh on
absolutely know,
a life upon the streets
at least for long
I’d not survive
the sabotage in hope.
For far too long
I’d lived
a lithium above despair
a hearse before
I watched the homeless
place their hand
above their heart and knew
if they had hats
would slow and very slow remove
the trembling notwithstanding
a silence in respect.
The cortege press
his hand the crowds across
this moment new
passed nigh beyond
the oldest explanation
a hand towards
expectations
not renewed
The coffin doesn’t pass
the rich hotels
that cater to
the very rich . . . exclusively
their hands
toward the exhortations
aren’t shaped
as if they ever were.
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