portion of the artwork for Jayne Pupek's poems

True Crime
Jayne Pupek

I was living in a trailer
overlooking a river gone dry
and listening to the books on tape
my blind neighbor had loaned me
before she overdosed.
Mostly, she’d chosen
true crime, tales full of grisly details
about murder, rape, kidnapping.
Her books left me uneasy,
and yet, sometimes
I turned out the lights
and listened to the voice
in complete darkness,
the way she must have listened
and heard boots crossing the riverbed,
or the rustle of a plastic bag,
duct tape and revolver inside.


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FRiGG: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry | Issue 27 | Law & Order Issue | Winter 2010