Pandemic Noir No. 3, City Gone Missing
Businesses disappear, your favorite restaurant (the Cha Cha Cha on Virgil!), or the last remaining news stand in that part of town. People disappear, maybe a rogue husband who’s cleaned out your bank account—the money You earned—and skipped town. Vanished. Happened to a college teacher I knew, back in the day. Species have a way of disappearing. On occasion, a section of a city, one with people in it, goes missing, and not by accident.
What lies behind most of these disappearances? Money, usually, or something like it. When that guy said, “Follow the money,” he said a thing worth following. Yet, I’ve heard stories…. Sometimes even the money goes missing. Or tax returns. Something like money.
It’s good that Mike Hammer pursued a suitcase stuffed with radioactive material through and around Bunker Hill, so we got some of that storied neighborhood on film before it went missing. And, here’s another good thing—William Archila caught the noir mood, atmosphere, landscape, and glimpses of the City’s dark-running, and disappearing, narrative, in his poem “Cine Negro.”
– Suzanne Lummis
Top image credit to www.Poetry.LA
