Hard-Boiled Mystery

The Cautious Coquette showed up first, next
The Negligent Nymph, The Terrified
Typist, The Vagabond
Virgin, my father’s paperbacks,
35 cents a pop and smelling
of Clairol, forgotten
on the high shelves of my bookcase,
saved, I suppose, for sentimental reasons,

reminding me how when the trench-coated hero,
cigarette in hand, kissed the virginal heroine
in the old movies on our 12-inch television screen,
my father turned to me and muttered
Mush,