A Magazine of Many Arts

Count Your Sheep – http://countyoursheep.com
No Room for Magic – http://noroomformagic.com
The Wisdom of Moo – http://wisdomofmoo.com
When I set out to experience anything in the various entertainment media–novels, movies, webcomics, what have you–I find that I often use the word “grab” to describe my response.  “It just didn’t grab me,” I’ll say, or, “It grabbed me right from the start and wouldn’t let me go.”

I like the image of it: an invisible hand reaching through my eyeballs and trying to wrap its fingers around my brain.  The work in question wants to affect me, after all, wants to make me see the world as its creator does, and sometimes it can, digging into the folds of my cerebrum and taking root.

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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.

The next day, Fay was taken out of school before lunch to go to a mental hospital. In her cooking class, she had held her right hand over the gas flame until the flesh blistered. She had not made any sound while doing it; the teacher’s slave had been the first to notice, and spent the rest of the day apologizing for her slow response.

Unharry picked me up from school as soon as it let out, instead of letting me take the trolley home as usual. Both Dad and Michelle were waiting for me in the car. As I rode home, the three of them grilled me. Was Fay having any new problems in school? Any sudden changes in her relationships with other kids? Did she seem less interested in her other activities? Had she talked to me about hurting herself? No, I said, no, no, no.

Then Michelle asked, “Does this have anything to do with Uncesar?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Unharry and Michelle looked at each other. Somehow, I had betrayed my twin sister.

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I must have spent five minutes going through Michelle’s kitchen looking for a grocery bag.  As I searched, I felt the rubber band around my wrist, pulling on my body hairs. The kitchen smelled of grease and cigarette smoke. When I found the bag — on a hook on the closet door, near the recycling bin — the feel and the sound of the plastic made me feel strong, as strong as Fay had been, before she became enslaved.

It was 3:00 in the morning. I would have to go to sleep eventually. On waking up, I might remain William Berkman, honor student at Winter Hill Middle School. Or I might become Michelle Unwilliam Proudhon, the slave of Michelle Proudhon. Or I could choose to not wake up at all.

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The science quilt challenge has been postponed so we can do more publicity around it and get more entries.

I’m going to be at Arisia later on in the month.  Let me know if you’ll be there.  I’m looking into having some kind of get together, so let me know if you plan on being around.  I’m spending the next two weeks frantically working on my entries for the art show — you know, the way that I swore last year I was never going to do again?  I am most likely not going to do a masquerade entry this year, to avoid some of the insanity of last year.  Last year I was sewing etc. well past midnight every day for the three weeks preceding the con, only to have a masquerade entry that was eh and an art show display that was pretty lame.  Only as soon as I decided to skip the masquerade I finally figured out how to pull off the technical effect that had escaped me all year.

Next issue we will start a new story by Seth Gordon.  I’m looking for new artists to profile, so write me if you are interested or know someone interesting.

This week, we have three poems by two poets to share with you.  Mari’s work has previously appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Dog Versus Sandwich, Aberrant Dreams, Every Day Fiction, and numerous other print and online markets.  Shira’s poems have been seen in Electric Velocipede, and she has upcoming work in ChiZine and Cabinet des Fees.  Her poem was inspired by a pair of Elise Mattheson haiku earrings.  Both poets have a gift for expressing narrative in the small space of a poem.

Weaving nettle shirts was easy enough –
pulling the stinging threads across the loom
only leaves my skin feeling torn and rough.

The silence: that stings. In my quiet room,
I hunger for words, as my tongue stays trapped.
Pulling the stinging threads across the loom,

I try to forget, to keep myself wrapped
against laughter. My fingers burn. And yet
I hunger for words, as my tongue stays trapped

in this seven year silence, this rough net
of freedom and spells, where I must still hold
against laughter.  My fingers burn. And yet.

I pick up a dark feather, not consoled,
thinking of whispers in a lover’s ear,
of freedom and spells. Where I must still hold

to my rough weavings, where each voiceless year
only leaves my skin feeling torn and rough,
thinking of whispers in a lover’s ear.
Weaving nettle shirts was easy enough.

Walk east of the sun, and west of the moon,
they said, as if I cared for directions,
or anything else. I walked pathways strewn

with broken starlight, on rose tipped oceans,
watched crimson winged doves sip rage.  “Follow me,”
they said, as if I cared for directions

when my heart bled stones. An old willow tree
cradled me; I wept my dark distress,
watched crimson winged doves sip rage. “Follow me,”

whispered the moon, handing me a soft dress
bound in a nut.  The moon’s tender shadows
cradled me. I wept my dark distress.

begged the sun for news. He draped my sorrows
with forgotten dreams. Following commands,
bound in a nut, the moon’s tender shadows

seized me, until I did not know my hands
or anything else. I walked pathways strewn
with forgotten dreams, following commands:
walk east of the sun, and west of the moon.