Barry Ergang is Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine and an Assistant Editor at Mysterical-e. His fiction, poetry, and non-fiction have appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. Visit the author's website.

Direct correspondence to Barry Ergang or to Editor.

My office window frames a thousand midnights
neoned in felled hopes, death, the want of a world
gone right. L.A. sprawls below, courtesan
as sincere as a casting agent’s smile:
glitter crusted with sores, betrayed by sunlight.
Floating in glass, among ashen stars pooled
beneath a bloodless moon, my image appears
and disappears, timed to the flashing sign
from the transients’ hotel across the street.

Somewhere a siren sings its brutal song.
More work for you, Marlowe? I ask myself.

Philip Marlowe, Investigations, the sign
on the pebbled glass door says.
                                                                 Trouble drifts in
on a raw red wind like the rancid odor
of greasy food from the hash joint downstairs:
the blackmailed millionaire whose pride’s untamed;
the ex-con haunted by his missing lover;
the elegant blonde with the cool blue gaze —
clients who rent me, sometimes sell me out
while I, lockbox for secrets, lies, and illusions,
deliver up their stillborn ugly truths.

That’s you, Marlowe, I mutter, pour myself
a drink. Galahad in rusted armor.

Trouble: the cop who doesn’t own his soul
rakes me with a stony stare, says, “Shamus, what
the hell you up to now? Every time we find
a stiff, I gotta see your mug.”

                                                                That’s me:
the big sleep’s poster-boy, meat wagon’s pal.

Trouble: hard guys with minds like a butcher’s apron
warn me off the case, guns and saps ready
to back up their gaudy Hollywood patter.

That’s you, Marlowe, sneering at blue steel clutched
by tight-lipped men who dole out long goodbyes.

The nights are when I know I’m old and tired.
Cigarette smoke spirals into darkness,
the rye scrapes down my throat and warms my gut.
I’m just a reflection in a dirty pane
but maybe not so easily broken.
Trouble is my business, isn’t it? And all
for what? Twenty-five bucks a day and expenses.
I’d get another line of work, but it’s
a long fall from the high window of conscience.