FADE INS AND BLACK OUTS (after Luc Etienne, a variation)
To the reader: For the
complete "Möbius Strip" effect, print out two copies of
this poem. Scotch tape the pages
together into two long
pages, each containing the entire
poem, then cut away the title
and anything under the last
line of the poem which now reads, "my bra."
Trim away any white space beyond the left and right margins,
leaving no more than an inch on each side to make a
"strip" of words. Scotch tape, glue, or staple the
trimmed poems back to back, so that both copies run parallel to
each other, but in a mirrored image. The first lines of both
copies, " I slow-," should be back to back to one
another, and so on. Loop the poem into a cylinder, then
twist it once before splicing and scotch taping what is currently the first line and last line together. The last
line/first line should now read, "my bra. I slow-"
on both sides of the Möbius. You can begin and end your reading of this "Möbius
Strip" poem at any point you like--I suggest beginning any
point where there is block of white space.
Click here
to read and print the poem. Available in printer friendly Adobe PDF format.
If you do not have Adobe Reader installed in your computer, please
visit adobe.com
and download a free copy.
Denise Duhamel is the author of 13 books and
chapbooks, the most recent of which is Queen
for a Day:Selected and New Poems (University of Pittsburgh
Press, 2001.) An assistant professor at Florida International
University in
Miami, she co-edited, with Nick Carbo, Sweet Jesus: Poems
about the Ultimate Icon (The Anthology Press, 2002.) Her
poems appear on webzines such as Double Room, Big Bridge,
Shampoo, Ducky, Slope, Caffeine Destiny, X-Stream, Muse Apprentice
Guild, and Blackbird: An Online Journal of Literature and the Arts.
