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.