A Magazine of Many Arts

Some call it the Nexus,
others call it the Void,
but for us it’s simply the Transfer Station.
It’s the one place in the Universe
where all the garbage gathers,
the light and the dark,
the material and immaterial,
the cast off and the cast out,
the aimless bits of solar wind-blown debris
and lost souls hoping to catch a glimpse
of the infinite, before the refrigerator door closes
and the light goes out.

But just because the light goes out
doesn’t mean one ceases to exist—to the contrary.
The Transfer Station takes matter,
whether it matters or not,
and transforms it into something new:
a planet, a star, an automobile.
There’s no rhyme or reason,
only the perpetuation of what was
into what will become.
A galaxy, a refrigerator, an infant child—
the list goes on, both past and future.
No one can possibly know the outcome
of such a random afterthought.

But you can’t accept that can you?
Of all creations you are the only ones
who question your station in life.
But then maybe that is your gift,
and why you will continue to wash up
on our cluttered shore,
bruised and battered yet not defeated,
resisting the inevitable
even when you know the inevitable must be;
clinging the way a dying star shakes its fists,
displaying the brilliance of its anger
across the blackboard of the cosmos.

But judge not the intent or purpose
lest we be judged on the purpose of our intent.
Don’t bother looking that one up,
you won’t find it.
Just know that we here at the Transfer Station,
where nothing is ever wasted
and nothing ever is a waste,
take a special pleasure in taking you in
and turning you out,
making your transition
as meaningful as possible,
knowing you will never admire us
the way we have come to admire you.

Illustration is il fegato è il pettine del gallo by Arshile Gorky, 1944 in the Albright-Knox Gallery.

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

Even though when rebottled for sale,
the insanely-expensive draughts are small,
the original container is said to have
been huge, magnifying, behind the moat
of glass, scales the size of platters,
a cold Palomar-like eye, and fire-blackened
teeth.

As for the properties it is alleged to confer?
Like most folk medicine that involves
the consumption of animal parts, even
in this age of germline editing and born-again
dragons, the effect is rumored to be largely
psychosomatic:

the inner wings that sprout may still allow
you to believe you can fly, but any knights
you attempt to ingest are far more likely
to induce heartburn than gastronomic
satiety — there still being no evidence
at this point (or so saith our procurer,
flashing unicorn inlays) that drinking
dragon wine is suspected to be the cause
in at least three investigations
of spontaneous human combustion.

Chinese snuff bottle, 19th century, glass bottle with jadeite stopper, Honolulu Museum of Art

She is sister to all
citizens of the sea.
She has kept the selchies’ secrets,
danced with them at moonrise,
carpet of discarded pelts
beneath her feet.
The mermaids permit her earthbound voice
to join their chorus;
although she’s neither terrible nor tragic,
her songs still taste of salt.
 
She travels each day
to hear the holy rock struck
like a drum by ocean’s swells,
her own heart hammering
answer near as loud.
This is prayer and preparation.
 
The last of her kind to have the gift,
the last whose knowing fingers
harvest and weave,
she must wait
till infant granddaughter grows
before she can pass on the ancient craft;
her only child, a son, lacks
blood’s inheritance
or woman’s patience.
 
No mollusk delivers up its thread to her.
Byssus cloth, shimmering with memories of nacre,
never sold but saved for special gifts of love,
is far less precious than her work.
Hers is true sea-silk,
woven from wave and wind.
 
It needs no lemon-juice to coax its gold.
Her silk catches the glint of sun,
star-silver, moon-shadow,
the undergleam of deeps shaded
by coral forests
and the dreams of whales.
 
Woven into armor,
its shark-strong links
make the warrior invincible.
Suppleness learned from
the dance of kelp beneath the waves,
its robes grant undine-gracefulness
to any wearer.
A sail of her stuff,
so fine it may fold into a tea-cup,
will carry your ship
through all the seven worlds.
 
—That is, for those few
who win the wave-weaver’s favor,
convince her of a righteous cause.—
 
But for herself,
she sometimes knits a net
and, passing the pearl-laden oysters by,
trawls the waters for the tales
the sea tells no one but itself.

Photo by Alvesgaspar – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15905060

It’s a day that smells of sulfur,
semi-cooled lava and odd vegetation
that will grow just about anywhere.
It’s a chiseling-rock day.
A collecting-samples day.
A day of wandering through
metals cast off by the deep interior.
I start it with a yawn,
a stumble across the bedroom floor.
I can hear my co-workers, already up.
filling the corridors with coughing and complaining.
It isn’t what I signed up for
but I own my situation just like I do my chin bristle.
Only the job doesn’t come clean
at the edge of a razor.

Wedge a fist open, find a coffee cup
stained the color of a molting rat,
poke gook out from under eyelids,
then slump in chair, suck caffeine into
every vein in my body
to waken all that blood sludge –
those are my body’s orders.
And reach for a cigarette of course –
like a mime because there are no cigarettes
between here and Epimetheus.
NASA don’t want me breathing in nicotine.
But they have no problem
with the fumes of Mount Copernicus.

The guy in the room next door flushes a toilet.
The woman on the other side
has brought her family along for the duration.
They argue like scientists with contradictory theories.
Over nothing really. It’s just how they are –
doomed to bring the ‘f’ word
to the far reaches of the galaxy.
A snarled “Don’t you talk that way to me”
is like an alarm clock around here.

Must be time for my second coffee.
Or my second phony cigarette.
The day’s instructions spill out of my bedside
multi-function unit.
The agenda is the same as yesterday and the day before.
And always, in bold lettering.
a brusque, “Don’t forget to turn in your reports
by the end of the day.”

So here I am.
More light years from home
then there is light.
I was out of university
and Big Space was hiring.
They stuck a helmet on my head,
equipped me with the latest in rock hammers,
and let me loose in the universe.
I’ve been sealing and labeling pebbles ever since.

I could have been a doctor like my old man.
Or even a musician like my grandfather.
They’ve never been beyond the stratosphere
and their imaginations haven’t complained.
By the time I see Earth again, I’ll be middle aged
And half the people I know will be dead.
Yes, with all that back pay, I’ll be Croesus rich.
But there’ll be no one for me to spend it on,
least of all myself.

The team meet in the mess hall for breakfast.
The conversation is muted and without eye contact.
Then it’s suit up, wave goodbye to oxygen,
and do your best to ape
exactly what you did yesterday.
Yes, I’ve witnessed much that others haven’t.
So wake me up when it’s time for me to testify.

illustration is Metal House– Tin Wind Up – Astronaut – Box Art by D. J. Shin

Illustration is By Giovanni Boldini – Dorotheum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18993859