Negativity's Kiss is a noir poem, with characters and a story,

violence, cops, everything one likes about the crime novel,

minus its robotic, skippable detail. Plus language that rocks.

However the poet doesn't know how to be straight enough

to just do it-tone and genre-so this is pretty crooked. Satirical

and feral, written at the time of Hurricane Katrina.

The world of the poem is an international city that slides-everything

slides-between being like Paris and being like

New York. But maybe it's more like Gotham City, where

everyone knows everyone, and even a poet can be in the

media spotlight, if someone tries to kill her...

Alice Notley