Poems by Dana Gioia

Film Noir
  
It’s a farm town in the August heat
With a couple of bars along Main Street.
A jukebox moans from an open door
Where a bored waiter sweeps the floor.
 
A bus pulls up by Imperial Fruit.
A guy gets off in a new prison suit.
He’s not bad looking.  Medium height.
Full of ambition.  Not too bright.
 
He’s a low life.  He’s one of the lost
Who’s burnt every bridge he’s ever crossed.
Just out of the slammer, a ticking bomb,
The Wrath of God and Kingdom Come.
 
It’s the long odds on a roll of the dice
For big stakes you can’t bet twice.
The cards get dealt.  The wheel spins.
At the end of the night the house always wins.
 
He sees her alone at the end of the bar,
Smoking and hot like a fallen star.
She’s a cold beauty with a knowing wink.
If she shot you dead, she’d finish your drink.
 
Some guys learn from their mistakes,
But all he learned is to raise the stakes.
There’s something he forgot in jail--
That the female’s deadlier than the male.
 
It’s tough love from a hard, blue flame,
And you can’t beat a pro at her own game.
It’s the long con.  It’s the old switcheroo.
You think you’re a player, but the mark is you.
 
She’s married but lonely.  She wishes she could.
Watch your hands!  Oh, that feels good.
She whispers how much she needs a man.
If only he’d help her.  She has a plan.
 
Their eyes meet, and he can tell
It’s gonna be fun, but it won’t end well.
He hears her plot with growing unease.
She strokes his cheek, and he agrees.

It’s a straight shot.  It’s an easy kill.
If he doesn’t help her, some other guy will.
It’s a sleek piece with only one slug.
Spin the chambers and give it a tug.
 
The heat of her lips, the silk of her skin.
His body ignites. He pushes in.
They lie in the dark under the fan— 
A sex-drunk chump, a girl with a plan.



In Chandler Country
  
California night. The Devil’s wind,
the Santa Ana, blows in from the east,
raging through the canyon like a drunk
screaming in a bar.
                                The air tastes like
a stubbed-out cigarette. But why complain?
The weather’s fine as long as you don’t breathe.
Just lean back on the sweat-stained furniture, 
lights turned out, windows shut against the storm, 
and count your blessings.
                                          Another sleepless night,
when every wrinkle in the bedsheet scratches 
like a dry razor on a sunburned cheek,
when even ten-year whiskey tastes like sand,
and quiet women in the kitchen run
their fingers on the edges of a knife
and eye their husbands’ necks. I wish them luck.
 
Tonight it seems that if I took the coins
out of my pocket and tossed them in the air
they’d stay a moment glistening like a net
slowly falling through dark water.
                                                        I remember
the headlights of the cars parked on the beach,   
the narrow beams dissolving on the dark   
surface of the lake, voices arguing
about the forms, the crackling radio,   
the sheeted body lying on the sand,
the trawling net still damp beside it. No,
she wasn’t beautiful—but at that age
when youth itself becomes a kind of beauty— 
“Taking good care of your clients, Marlowe?”
 
Relentlessly the wind blows on. Next door 
catching a scent, the dogs begin to howl.
Lean, furious, raw-eyed from the storm,
packs of coyotes come down from the hills
where there is nothing left to hunt.

Dana Gioia, born in Los Angeles, the son of a Sicilian father and Mexican-American mother,  is a poet, critic, author of six collections of poetry, including Interrogations at Noon (2001), which received the American Book Award, and 99 Poems: New & Selected (2016), which won the Poets’ Prize. His critical collections include Can Poetry Matter? (1992), a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. He was the first Poet Laureate of California to visit all 58 counties of the state. Gioia also served as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 to 2009. Business Week magazine called him, “The Man who Saved the NEA.” 

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