Pratik : Pratik's Noir Issue Special: American poet Dorianne Laux's "Homicide Detective: A Film Noir"

DORIANNE LAUX

Homicide Detective: A Film Noir

Smell of diesel fuel and dead trees

on a flatbed soaked to the bone.

Smell of dusty heater coils.

We got homicides in motels and apartments

all across the city: under the beds,

behind the doors, in the bathtubs.

It's where I come in at 5 AM,

paper cup of coffee dripping

down my sleeve, powdered

half-moon donut in my mouth.

Blood everywhere. Bodies

belly down, bodies faceup

on the kitchenette floor.

¿Dónde está? Que Será.

We got loose ends, we got

dead ends, we got split ends,

hair in the drains, fingerprints

on glass. This is where I stand,

my hat glittery with rain,

casting my restless shadow.

These are the dark hours,

dark times are these, hours

when the clock chimes once

as if done with it, tired of it: the sun,

the highways, the damnable

flowers strewn on the fake wool rug.

These are the flayed heart's flowers,

oil-black dahlias big as fists,

stems thick as wrists, striped, torn,

floating in the syrupy left-on music

but the bright world is done and I'm

a ghost touching the hair of the dead

with a gloved hand.

These are the done-for, the poor,

the defenseless, mostly women,

felled trees, limbs lashing

up into air, into rain,

as if time were nothing, hours,

clocks, highways, faces, don't step

on the petals, the upturned hands, stay

behind the yellow tape, let

the photographer's hooded camera pass,

the coroner in his lab coat, the DA

in her creased black pants.

Who thought

to bring these distracting flowers?

Who pushed

out the screen and broke the lock?

Who let him in?

Who cut the phone cord, the throat,

the wrist, the cake

on a plate and sat down and ate

only half?

What good is my life if I can't read the clues,

my mind the glue and each puzzle piece

chewed by the long-gone dog who raced

through the door, ran through our legs

and knocked over the vase,

hurtled down the alley and into the street?

What are we but meat, flesh

and the billion veins to be bled?

Why do we die this way, our jaws

open, our eyes bulging, as if there

were something to see or say?

Though today the flowers speak to me,

they way they sprawl in the streaked light,

their velvet lips and lids opening as I watch,

as if they wanted to go on living, climb

my pant legs, my wrinkled shirt, reach up

past my throat and curl over my mouth,

my eyes. Bury me in bloom.

Dorianne Laux is the author of Life on Earth (W. W. Norton, 2023); the textbook Finger Exercises for Poets (W. W. Norton, 2023); Only as the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and other collections. She has taught creative writing the U. of Oregon, Pacific University and North Carolina State U.