Normally we don't run pieces written by ourselves -- poetry or otherwise --in the fiction section of this site. But when I read this poem by our fiction editor, Gerald So in CrimeSpree (and saw it again, in an article on crime poetry by Anthony Rainone in Mystery Scene) I knew I'd run out of excuses. An exceptional piece, I felt, deserves an exception.
This is the real thing, a few hard terse lines somehow managing to capture the passion and the grit of one of the genre's most influential, popular and still misunderstood writers, written upon the news of his passing.
For the record, Gerald actually had nothing to do with my decision. He granted us permission to run it, but it was with a certain amount of trepidation on his part, which makes him not just a good writer in my book but, more importantly, a good guy.
"Mickey Spillane"
A Poem by Gerald So
died today at 88.
I want to learn
too late
about his life,
make his loss
a knife to the gut
not a sap to the
back of my skull.
