Pulp Poem of the Week has moved!

New poems are now appearing weekly at

Noirboiled Notes

(Follow the link above!)

She had no business being

so damned smart and

so damned sexually attractive

at the same time.

One or the other was fine.

A man could understand that

and cope with it.

Brett Halliday

A Redhead for Mike Shayne

1964

His eyes were dimming crescents,
straining upward into the starred

night sky,
as if trying to make out, to visualize,
some phantom face that no one else

could see.
And what is love anyway but the

unattainable,
the reaching out toward an illusion?

Cornell Woolrich

Rendezvous in Black
1948

She knew how.

Marvin H. Albert

Devil in Dungarees

1960

What the hell!

Two hundred bucks a week,

and all I'd have to do for it

was occasionally kill

somebody for him.

"When do I start?" I said.

Bruno Fischer

The Fast Buck

1952

Dead men

are heavier

than broken hearts.

Raymond Chandler

The Big Sleep

1939

Ostensibly a lawyer, he maintained

a luxurious Hollywood office.

He even kept office hours.

But he hadn't appeared

in a courtroom for years.

He didn't have to.

He knew where too many bodies,

male and female,

had spent their lost weekends.

His was a nasty business

but he never had trouble

with his conscience.

He had none.

Day Keene

Framed in Guilt

1949