Your Poem of the Week:

The Set-Up
Snake oil sales
were slow. So I hung

out my shingle on
a shadow.

Desk-drawer liquor

A dead man’s loan. Soon
chinless stoolies

slunk & doorjambed —
ratted

that she ain’t no
good, that she wears a watch

on both wrists. Too
many midnights.

Evidence mounting like butterflies

Still I made them informants
for phonies, phoned

to hear her breath.
She was faith

enough to believe.
She’s a peach. A pistol.

I waived my fee

I left my agency

Came home to rooms ran-
sacked, tossed

by invisible hands.
Hip flask. Blackjacked.

Swig,
mickey slip, slug.

I woke doubled & crossed

Drug, ferried
through whisky alleys

Bruisers, suicide doors

The crooked chief interrogated
me about her body

She’s no more mine, no eye
witness, nor alibi

No one will attest she ever
did exist.

I was her autumn guy

By the wharf was left
waterlogged & wise

My dogs dead
tired, I humped it

home, humming gumshoe blues.

by Kevin Young
from Black Maria