Dark, dirty streets live in my mind
broken brick alleyways,
the color of blood in the midnight.
Streetlamps from another era
fasten me here for a short while.
The warm stickiness of old city grime,
it’s endless, never removed.
And I wonder,
Is this how it’s done?
Where the last step of a Jazz duo lay,
where the putrid decay of the dirty city lives?
Where words are scrawled across the walls in warm blood,
Is this where you find the poem?
Or just the poet,
looking?
Eeks, one of my first published poems; it appeared in Directions magazine about twenty years ago.
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Noreen Lace
Originally from the Midwest, Noreen Lace received an MFA from California State University where she now teaches. She believes in the beauty of language to express the darkness in life. She is the author of two novellas, West End and Life of Clouds, as well as a book of short stories. Here in the Silence. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in national as well as international journals, including The Chicago Tribune's Printers Row Journal, The Oleander Review, Vine Leaves Press (Australia), Silver Stream Journal (Ireland), Pilcrow and Dagger, Fishfood, and others. "Memorial Day Death Watch," a memoir of her father's passing, placed as a finalist in Writer Advice, while her poem, "All at Once," was published as a finalist in Medusa's Laugh Contest issue. More work is always in progress.
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