Fading bleakly, / truer to life…. Noir’s original palette projects no choice for all in the frame, their desperate acts fading bleakly, truer to life than we care to say. Gerald So edits The Five-Two weekly crime poetry site. Previously he served as an officer of The Short Mystery Fiction Society and fiction editor for Kevin Burton Smith’s www.thrillingdetective.com.

Allie asked in a stolen moment why I joined up to fly. Leaving the ground for fun was nuts enough, she said. Why do it for war? I didn’t want to fly straight, I said honestly. Straight was too easy. I wanted to buck and roll. So what if cannons and planes shot at me? […]