Open or Closed

by Brian Palmu

MARLOWE:
The unkindest cut (and I’m not talking about the foreskin), he’ll soon be
thrown into a hole in the ground where waning moons press wan light on rabid
curs doing their St. Vitus dance on an unmarked slab. He’s done.

DONNE:
That’s me, Detective.

MARLOWE:
I hope it shall never be so, Constable. Pray, what, again, were his last
words?

DONNE:
This footnote to a particularly vituperative report on the love poems of a
serial bomb builder: “After finishing Mr X’s sixteenth redundant
monstrosity, my spleen may soon explode. Speaking of explosives, in my
garden there’s a strange black bag with a red wire affixed, and snaking
athwart the rustling rhododendron. Think I’ll go investigate ….”

MARLOWE:
As for the murderer, we didn’t need the fingerprinters. Remaindered one week
after the launch, and now the grey pinstripes. Poor shit.

DONNE:
Note the knife’s angle of entry into the critic’s blood-congealed melon. He
was a southpaw, I reckon. Perhaps a Faulkner/O’Connor acolyte? Was the
victim, in sympathy, a federalist, or worse, a formalist?

MARLOWE:
The internecine poetic thrusts and sallies aren't for the faint or feint of
heart, I’m afraid.

DONNE:
What did the wretched scribbler leave behind?

MARLOWE:
No family or friends to speak of. A dented cocker spaniel. A fierce bust of
William Logan. A month’s supply of industrial-strength soap.

DONNE:
Aye. If there were at least one supporter to etch on his cold granite:
“Ultimately, his hands were clean.”