Are the Femmes Fatale?
Clips from Devil in a Blue Dress and Chinatown come on the screen — I re-think the “femme fatale.” That’s right, I can both think and re-think. Not for nothing that liz gonzález calls me “The Dame with Brains” — though my eighth-grade math teacher, the unhappy Mrs. Roberson, would not have agreed. She once threw some chalk at me, something to do with a multiplication problem. That was life in that dirty, angry little railroad town, Truckee, where no doubt many noir crimes got committed, mostly by drunk people. Now it’s a charming little boutique tourist town. Noir crimes might still take place, but they’ll never be found out. Everything’s silent as the snow.
Fine poems about women, or imagined from a woman’s point of view, by Kevin Young — from Black Maria (Mar-i-a, as in “They call the wind Mar-i-a,” and the police paddy wagon that carries prisoners) and John (goes by Jack) Allman, from Loew’s Triboro.
– Suzanne Lummis
Top image credit to www.Poetry.LA