A Magazine of Many Arts

His hands work, flaying the hide from the deer,
parting the sinews that bind it to flesh
with a stone-flake knife; murmuring apologies
and gratitude for the gift of its life.

Dripping, he drapes it over his shoulders;
feels the still-warm blood course down his spine,
feels the weight of the antlered skull upon his brow,
feels the wet sinews bind to his flesh.

His hands clench to fists, become hooves, his spine
contorts—and then he races away through
the woods, fleeing pursuers more deadly
than any mere wolf.

When he comes to rest in a cold camp,
fireless, he strips off the borrowed skin,
but leaves the head in place—a mask with
sightless eyes, carved from flesh, and hard as bone.

Wolves come, having scented wounded deer,
but whine and press bellies to earth when they
meet his lifeless eyes; they know he is no prey.
They gather close and warm him until dawn.

When his pursuers come too close, the wolves
begin to howl, and the man puts back on his skin—
flees as the wolves harass the men who pursue him.
At sunset he returns to find their bodies, fletched.

Weeping, he thanks them for their kindness,
and then his hands work once more,
separating supple skin and soft fur,
settling it over his shoulders once more.

His nose touches earth; he catches the scent
of those who pursue him—and this time
when he leaps from the brambles it is he
who hunts for them.

As if it was merely a matter of wine and parchment,
polished glass and hammered copper, the condensation
resounds against the pulse ticking in your throat.
If you pierce the eyes of crows, lace them together
with crimson silk, they still summon the darkest nights.

That swelling in your belly will be milkweed,
swallow wort, goldenrod. Your lips
will give shape the way mares give milk. Syllables, strung
like abalone on a thread of sunlight, will scatter
like so much rice. They will sting like fresh cream
on a sliced tongue. The frost tightens its noose,
but your words are betrothed to the ripe sun,
and your ululations crepe the branches heavy.

Your body gives the soil its permission
as the light nestles in your palm like fur
and bone, and you kneel in the green confusion and weep.

illustration is American weeds and useful plants: being a second and illustrated edition of Agricultural botany by William Darlington

Recently, I decided to reboot my personal website. It was mostly cobwebs at this point and many of the plugins I had used had faded into obscurity at some point over the last decade. I deleted everything that was broken, put up a couple of placeholder pictures, and went on to one of my five million other projects.

Last week, someone I met asked if they could purchase some of my artwork. Cool! It’s been a while. I handed her a business card so she could reach me later. Later that day, she wrote me in confusion to say she’d looked at my website but couldn’t tell what kind of things I did or what my style was. Whoops. That was embarrassing. So I rushed around putting a minimal website up so at least a visitor would know who I was. I wound up missing my Monday posting deadline for Polu Texni while I was working on that.

I don’t like to give a poet less than a week of featured time, so I thought it was a good time to do something else instead of the normal poem to make up the rest of the week. I decided to do a round up of artist links from business cards I’ve picked up recently. I sat down to look at all the websites, and guess what? Out of the half dozen sites I planned on showing, only one of them was functional, professional, and gave a good idea of what the artist did. The rest of them were out-of-date, contained no pictures, had broken functionality, or were missing all together. I had picked up all of these business cards in 2018, so over 80% of artists I met recently made a bad impression and potentially lost a customer. Wow! The good part is that it made me feel much better for having committed the same sin. At least it’s a common mistake.

I’m going to hang on to the link to the good website for another day so I can introduce it with “hey, this work is cool” instead of “hey, this guy’s website isn’t broken.” For now, I’ll just remind artists and writers if you are passing out business cards at art shows or cons, make sure what you are linking to works and gives a good impression.

The desolation and terror of, for the first time,
realizing that the mother can lose you, or you
her, and your own abysmal loneliness…
~Francis Thompson

If I were you, and part of me is you of
Course, conceived as I was, not quite in love
But in spite of love for your fellow man
Who didn’t fit the reproductive plan
Outlined by the geneticists who ran
The robotic grafting units, I’d scan
The contracts more closely, looking for stuff,
If I were you,
That granted you parental rights you can
Keep. Like getting to see me; I began
As a numerical code, a bit rough
If I were you,
To identify me — not a person’s
Name by any means, but a type, a brand,
A factory where your DNA strand
Became a building code to merge with an
Other building code, like a hand in glove…
And here I am. I couldn’t search enough
If I were you.

illustration is Hope, II by Gustav Klimt