A Magazine of Many Arts

winter 2009

Sorry about the downtime, folks. I upgraded the mySQL server and something happened. Glad to be back and working on the Fall issue.

Summer 2009
Summer 2009

Expect an issue in our new quarterly format next week… fiction, reviews, poetry, and hopefully some etc.

Layoffs at work have increased my job responsibilities — the weekly publishing schedule will need to adjust.

There is no one left
to remember
that boiling water in eggshells
will catch me out.

I remain:
the homely child,
hair-puller,
torturer of cats,
bereft of any power
save lack of conscience.

Even cold iron
has given way
to silicon and plastic.

What kills me by increments
is not your black metal
or mummy-dry churches:
it’s the boredom
of seasons passing unnoticed
while I hump my ass
over a keyboard
to pay the rent.

I had centuries of joy
under sidhe hills
before my exile.

Human tedium
is the slowest strangle.
But you know all about that.

Rachael gave me permission to take Unfay to a movie on Saturday, so I took her to Unadam’s Revenge.

Unadam, the bald slave in the poster, belonged to a scientist in a government laboratory who was looking for drugs to make slaves smarter. Unadam took one of the test drugs, stopped obeying the scientist, and killed him. Then Unadam stole a jar of the drug and used it on all the other slaves in the laboratory, and they killed the other scientists.

The laboratory slaves rounded up the janitors, secretaries, lab technicians security guards, and other masters on the staff, and locked them in a conference room. One of the janitors asked Unadam, “What will you do with us?”

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In the first few months after Dad married Rachel, Fay got along with her by avoiding her. Rachel spent most of her time with Dad and the slaves, and let Unharry keep taking care of us. In private conversations with me, Fay would never refer to our stepmother by name — she usually called her “The Bimbo.” When I told her she was being unfair, she sulked until I gave up arguing with her.

Rachel was applying to the art schools in the area — she was over thirty, but she’d been so busy taking care of her mother that she hadn’t gone to college. (Fay considered this another reason to look down on her.) She showed me her portfolio, photography of women in fancy clothes, and said it was OK if I wasn’t impressed, I wasn’t old enough to understand these things.

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I was going to say that this is my second late post, when I looked back and realized that the last late post never actually made it up on the site.  I went ahead and put the old one up, just so I can say that I’ve faithfully posted every week. My bad.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do with this site lately.  I’ve felt since it started that I could see clearly what this project should be, but I’ve been struggling to put it into words.  I can picture the pieces that go into what I want with Polu Texni — hanging out in the con suite with my knitting and striking up conversations with the other knitters, arguing in the art show over whether a piece of art really belongs in an SF art show or not, reading a book or a story that I’m so excited about that I have to talk to everyone about it, knowing people who do metal work and wood work and electronics who play three instruments, speak four languages, and have never quite been able to choke down holding a job so they live in their parents’ basement (and somehow the stereotypes are true at the same time they miss the mark completely.)  How’s that for a run on sentence?

Lately, it occurs to me that what I want is more than an art/literary magazine, it’s an online SF convention.  I want to hang out in the con suite and argue with you folks.  I’m sorry that I can’t provide chinese food or chocolate chips cookies after midnight.  But it seems to me that there is a lot that will translate.  We can have an art show, we can have panels, we can have guests of honor, with a little thought maybe we can even filk or have masquerades.  And of course, we will continue to have book reviews and articles and fiction.  To me, the root of this community is in the literature.  I may be a huge fiber geek, but none of this would exist without the fiction.

I have lined up about three months of material for my weekly postings.  While these are going up, I’m going to be working behind the scenes to move this webzine in this direction.  I would love to hear your thoughts.  What would you want to see?  What about cons do you love most, what do you want to see reproduced in this format?

OK, my first missed (or rather, several days late) post.  The con went on until Monday, and I was so busy and exhausted afterwards, with so many ideas for this site swirling in my head that I couldn’t actually act on any of said ideas.

I saw Shira Lipkin at her reading and a panel, but it was too crowded to get up to say hello.  Michael Burstein was also there, and I also missed him.  I saw a lot of other old friends and met wonderful people, and overall had a fabulous time.  I sold three pieces in the art show, so I was very happy about that.

Monday, we’ll have the next installment of Seth’s story Very Truly Yours.