There are
many modes and styles of storytelling.
Classic, minimalist, expository, stream of consciousness, mosaic,
meta-fiction—and on and on go the ways in which an author can transpose their
imaginings into fiction. But
poetry? Have you ever read science
fiction in metered form?
Time to waste,
so I escape the city
At one of those
seedy establishments
They call ‘Glow
Shows’ because they fill the girls
So full of Pro’ it
nearly burns their veins.
Prometheus,
resident wonder-drug;
Pro’, Promo’,
’Theus, liquid-fucking-light;
Prohibited by city
law and shot
By yours truly,
Virgil Yorke, hero cop (1)
So run the
first lines of Oliver Langmead’s Dark
Star (2015, Unsung Stories). And what follows is a story that lives up to
every ounce of vividness contained in those few words—a proper story, just in measured
form.
The effect
replete, when Detective Yorke is called to the late night scene of a murder,
the emptiness between the lines makes what imagery that is in the lines—the
corpse’s neon veins—twice as powerful.
The city of Vox perpetually dark, the young woman’s body glows in the
back alley, begging Yorke—and the reader—to learn what has transpired. But just as his investigation begins, an even
bigger crime calls Yorke away. Vox
dependent on the power generated by three dying stars, one has been stolen. So, into the cold, dark night Yorke goes,
battling his own addictions every step of the way, the metered verse stripping
his story down to its evocative essentials.
