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256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
HER CLEVER HAND
My car cassettes clatter
at Diana's feet
“Don't you listen to boys?”
“I've spent my whole life
listening to boys.”
I answer on feminist autopilot
she crosses her legs
she's wearing a dress
I drive and perve
her calves do a silky stretch
her hand taut with blue veins
as she slots in k. d. lang
“Butch country 'n' western”
she murmurs in the raunchy riffs
“Don't you ever forget I'm a dyke?”
she slips her clever hand
between my thighs
to make me quiet.
We shake hands
and I'm stuck
how do you talk to poets?
I'm not known for my love
of fluffy clouds
fields of daffodils
or brumbies on a moonlit night
give me a good bottle of wine
a woman with spit and spark
and the Trifecta at Randwick
TEMETEMI
sotto la scorza
sono violenta
giù nel profondo
sono violenta
in cima alle dita
sono violenta
nelle ghiandole del seno
sono violenta
nel guscio della cervice
sono violenta
nel mio utero ferino
sono violenta
temetemi temetemi
sono femmina.
She’s thirty something
maybe forty
her hair honey-blond
streaks
falls in her eyes
she pushes it back
with a fidgety
nail-bitten hand
she got eyes
that flirt or fight
she’s gritty,
she’s bright
oh christ help me
she’s a bit of alright!
Porter is able to give us Jill’s impressions of someone in an instant.
Tony’s company
is hard cold work
like defrosting a refrigerator
Yet even in poetic form, the mystery is a true one. A family hires private investigator Jill Fitzgerald to find their missing daughter, Michelle Norris. When the daughter turns up dead, they continue to pay her to find the killer. There are the usual suspects—in this case several poets and teachers at her college that Michelle was obviously obsessed with. In fact, we see them through Michelle’s own eyes when Jill discovers a cache of the girl’s own poems, many of which are sexy, almost obscene. Jill has almost no interaction with the police, which saves even more time and space. Instead, she tells us
Michelle's mother has just rung
she's jack of the cops
I'm back on the job.
Because the descriptions of poets and poetry in general come through Jill’s eyes, it gives an impression of pedantry, of boredom, almost of silliness—spending one’s life doing, well, not much. Yet what we are reading is poetry, and it is anything but silly. Porter’s poems are down to earth, almost minimalistic, and very readable. The only problem I had with it is that I’m not sure what Jill does with the information she gathers once she has solved the mystery. It is a book to be read more than once—especially by writers who tend to be a bit too flowery and detailed in their descriptions—and that’s not something that can be said about most books. Although the round-off will show 4 stars, my actual rating is more like a 4.4.
Note: This review is included in my book The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel, along with information on over 930 other lesbian mysteries by over 310 authors.