Howard Hawks' Martinique by Chuka Susan Chesney

It’s the question 

rummy Eddie asks of

everyone: Was you ever

bit by a dead honey bee?

Slim answers  

Was you?

in that Wild Turkey tone

and he says 

you’re all right

while Harry’s smile tips

at the corner of his lip

She’ll kiss Harry in his suite

at the Hotel Marquis

He nicknames her “Slim”

She’s attracted to him

She sings huskily

at the hotel bar

pickpockets a man

Leans into the piano

croons a ditty for

Harry then she puckers 

up and blows

as she saunters

out his doorway

like an empty buttonhole

to her solitary room

across the hall

She's blue

with a bottle of velvety merlot

she got from fraternizing

with an unnamed fellow

Harry aids the Resistance

but nearly is shot

hides his fishing boat

for hire in a fogbank spot

Slim won’t fly She

wants to stay with Harry

who down in the basement

saves the wounded 

Free French hero 

whose lily-livered wife

bats her lashes at him

Vichy withholds beer from 

alcoholic Eddie

If he tells the truth

perhaps he’ll earn vermouth

Slim helps nab the pistol

from the desk lap drawer

Harry gunpoints the Gestapo

shoots the cold-blooded one

Before they’re arrested

the three escape

on the Queen Conch

skiff headed north 

to the States

Chuka Susan Chesney is an artist and a poet. Her poems, art, and/or flash fiction have been published in Peacock Journal, Inklette, New England Review, Compose, Picaroon, and Lummox. Chesney’s paintings and collages have been in exhibitions and galleries across the United States.