after Film Noir 101: The 101 Best Film Noir Posters from the 1940s – 1950s, Mark Fertig (Fantagraphics, 2014)

#98 Somewhere in the Night

The hand to the gate, steel; the lips to the mouth, red; the coat to the dress, red; the hat to the head, black; the gun to the hand and the lightning to the face, to the face.

#95 Side Street

The lamppost leans alarmingly and their arms disappear into it. It’s a dance with a gooseberry riding on their shoes, a three-legged race against temptation. The sun shines on half of us and we blush crimson and look to the side because to look into one another would be to ask too much. Those left sunless are bound to their shadows and are pointing – pointedly – at nothing.

#91 The Enforcer

The most vicious words in crimedom and Angela learned them all. Except she kept them under her pepperpot hat, under her brunette wig, under her hair too really red to be revealed – in the current climate. Kept them beneath her brows, her lashes, her nose; beneath her painted lips and her night-time sighs, beneath the dreams that get stuck between her teeth. She kept them under her dress’s everyday art, caged under her ribs and valved inside her heart. It’s only in her gut she ever let them rumble: shadow, office; backlit, beauty; smoke, hosiery; forever, devotion – Angela, darling.

#74 Fallen Angel

She wonders about her foot. Will it ever feel the same again? She wonders – with both hands – if she can feel the difference in the skin or in the patchwork of bones beneath. To better feel, she ties her wonderings up into a big red bow which she would present as an offering if only the man she loved was another man, one who gave all the capacity of his eyes to pretty things. Something is between them and it is not the rhythm her foot is now remembering.

#51 Kiss of Death

Every I is also a door. Sometimes, in the light of open doors, bodies lie improbably. And oh, I like to believe my arms are long enough to hold you from anywhere. We can be sketchy in the darkness and hide the parts that show no reaction. We can hope that our lips can cross other lips. We can bite out the rumours of colour.

#28 Raw Deal

You can’t hold a man like this. He holds himself instead, pressing a hand to his paper-bag coat to stop the red meat of him from coming apart. He’s burnt his bullets and is now performing a spotlit routine no one can take their eyes away from.

You can’t hold a man like this. I bet you the length of your eyelashes, I bet you the sweep of your hair and I bet you all the wholesome curls of every so-called better woman the world has ever supposedly known.

#13 Scarlet Street

Hello, lazylegs. You look like the only splash of colour between here and Scarlet Street. Or between here and the morning. Can you forget that I’m wearing someone else’s suit? Can you forget that I’m topped by my Sunday boating hat? Can you forget that I can only manage a dribbling hold on any cigarette? Despite it all, can you roll the dice at your wrist, and be impressed? Don’t you leave me with the lamppost. We could smirk and scowl our blue way throughout this goblin town.