The Dread  

Pursued by mobsters, small-time grifter Harry Fabian
(Richard Widmark) comes to the end of the line in
Night and the City.   The cinematographer for this
movie, Nick Masuraca, was one of film noir's great
innovators.
 Once more the lights of Bay City became something
distantly luminous beyond the rise and fall of
alien waves. Once more the garish lights of the
Royal Crown slid off to one side, the ship
seeming to preen itself like a fashion model on
a revolving platform. And once again the ports
of the good ship Montecito grew out of the black
Pacific and the slow steady sweep of the searchlight
turned around it like the beam of a lighthouse.

"I'm scared," I said suddenly, "I'm scared stiff."

Red throttled down the boat
and let it slide up and down the swell as though the water
moved underneath and the boat stayed in the same place.
He turned his face and stared at me.

"I'm afraid of death and despair," I said.
"Of dark water and drowned men's faces and skulls
with empty eyesockets. I'm afraid of dying, of being nothing,
of not finding a man named Brunette."

He chuckled. "You had me going for a minute. You sure
give yourself a pep talk."

-- from Farewell My Lovely

by Raymond Chandler

 

Tim Seibles
CHECK OUTSIDE
 

They believe that if they remain
frightened enough for long enough
things won't happen. You know -- things .

Listen to a city late at night:
the dead-bolts clapped into place,
tv's spitting on the floor, upstairs
mothers hammering Jesus
into their black thumbs.

But things will happen. Even here
with everybody here. People are going
to do some more things. You see it
all the time. Starting now

and from now on, weather is weather,
and news is weather too.
Who do you think is behind
all those uniforms? Your plans

your ideas     about tomorrow.
Even now, the blood turns
in your ear -- a story. You want
                        a story.

        But right now we're right
        in the middle of something really
        funny, and let me tell you: it's something
                    like a story, all this.

            People with chips -- heavy chips
            on their shoulders. People with a few
                        tricks up their sleeves           have
                    got to do some more.     things.

                Check outside -- how the wind runs
                        from some exact somewhere. That man
                near the wall by the 7-11 . What's
                                    he got in his hand?

Eloise Klein Healy
DARK

The dark is under.
It fits a place to put a hand but I can't see.
It's like a voice behind a door.
It can be just about anything I want to hear.

Darkness comes in every size of threat:
the dark cocoon at the end of my life,
storms that turn the sky into an empty can of dark
fitting snug onto the horizon,
the dark in putting my head in my hands,
my head into the cave of a person I don't love anymore.

I'll tell you again why I'm afraid of the dark.
I can see it coming
and can't ever tell just when it has arrived.
I sense it thin and waiting between the pages of books
but it's too fast even for a good reader.

From that place darkness
comes a phone call erratic with grief.
It fills the story called "dying in your sleep"
and was the only time left for voodoo to take,
for rapists to dress in.

I can't get a grip on darkness
though it wears my imagination like a shroud.
I've started hearing sunsets as cracking twigs.
I've taken to hiding a piece of flint in my shoe.

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