Crime Poetry "For The Love of Death" by Shirley Brewer

                                                           

April is Poetry Month, and to celebrate, every Saturday this month, we will be featuring a poem focused on crime or love of crime fiction from the fabulous crime poetry blog, THE FIVE-TWO, run by Gerald So. 

Today's poem is called FOR THE LOVE OF DEATH and it was written by Shirley J. Brewer

FOR THE LOVE OF DEATH

for P.D. James

When my spirits sink, I lose myself

in murder. A body in the Thames

distracts me from petty jolts:

a dead battery, a case of flu,

my personal map blurred in fog.

I crave an English mystery, a corpse

cropping up in the conservatory.

Adam Dalgliesh, poet-detective,

dissects with ease psyches and clues.

Death seems less grim in his presence.

Before I reach the last page

I’m at loose ends, dreading 

a return to my mundane dating scene.

On impulse, I commit a magic act,

insert myself into Chapter Eight.

Now, my hero questions

me at the murder site. I drown in his gaze,

even though a proper alibi eludes me.

My face turns herring red. Am I

guilty of self-exposure?

He lifts yards of yellow crime scene tape,

beckons me beneath the canopy—

his free hand a sudden heat on my shoulder.

I close my eyes and surrender, saved

from early onset rigor mortis.

SHIRLEY J. BREWER (Baltimore, Maryland) is a poet, educator and workshop facilitator. Her poems appear in Passager, Gargoyle, Spillway, Little Patuxent Review, The Comstock Review, Naugatuck River Review, and other journals. Shirley’s poetry chapbooks include A Little Breast Music (2008, Passager Books) and After Words (2013, Apprentice House/Loyola University).

You can follow The Five-Two on Twitter @PoemsonCrime The site also sells their anthologies of crime poetry.