ISSUE FOUR: Sell A Mystery | next poem →

from Star/Formation

Doulas Luman

                                                       of

                                           all             I know
                     the bustle of light        zigzagging,

                                                 superstition
                                     of the affairs of the world

                     sunset,

                                                                            the signal
                           to light
                                the August Summer
                                                                                  the copper re-
                     flection                            Sung          shattered into
                     sparkling glints like floating leaves

                                                                                                  To
                     go from one place to another
                                                                                  the shortest
                      distance between two points                      is
                                                 a zigzag

                                      the routes of the swallows, who cut the air

                                                                                                                                         the line
                                                                  the       reason to believe that

                                                       dropping from a rooftop

           following gutterings

                                                       a space in which routes are drawn

          from

          what is outside the eyes

                                                                                              eyes

                                                                                  scanning a blank page

                                                                                                   view

                                                                                        diminished.

                                                             mistakeable to the           eye

                                                                                        the wind
          stirs the vanes of the                                                   mo-
          ment
          this view, this light, this buzzing, this air
                                                 : obviously the name means this
          and could mean nothing but this.

                                I have never seen and will never see
                                                                          a fragment

                           It was dusk                                there.

                                                       the hour                     a
                                                      mask

                                                                            no longer

                           tha                            n
                          a growth of beard                              .

Douglas Luman is the Book Reviews editor for the Found Poetry Review, an intern at the Chicago School of Poetics, and an MFA candidate at George Mason University. He is sleeping in a library somewhere in Northern Virginia. Follow him on Twitter @douglasjluman, or at http://www.douglasjluman.com This five-page excerpt is from a book-length mashup text entitled "Star/Formation." It adapts and uses text from Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities" and a 1918 edition of Marco Polo's travel journals.

ISSUE FOUR: Sell A Mystery | next poem →











ISSUE FOUR: Sell A Mystery

Jesse Nissim
   Entrance and Difference
   There was a bit of dust
      named Alana

Madeline Vardell
   swept up in silver & yellow
        flashes

   An Imaginarian

Peter J. Greico
   [1401 - 1500]
   [11601 - 11700]
   [16901 - 17000]

KJ Hannah Greenberg
   Initially Thrilled to the Idea
       of Memories

Douglas Luman
   from Star/Formation

Vincent Toro
   MicroGod Schism Song

Rage Hezekiah
   Phlebotomy

Natalya Sukhonos
   Parachute

Laurel Radzieski
   X and Y Axes of Charts
       Made About T's Lover
       (The Incident)

Jonathan Travelstead
   Myopia

Emily Strauss
   White Night Terror

Les Kay
   In the Basement of the Penal
       Colony, Version 2.3,
       Rimbaud Remembers