Issue 3:1 | Featured Artist | Jon Hounshell

Relics
Jon Hounshell

Rust on my mind

Paint on my brush,

The oxidation of the aging

And the oxides in my brown

Washing with water, cleansing with rain

Making indelible marks of time on them both....

Slow death to metal....

Slow life to pulp battered to sheets

Graphite, light metal, heavy metal

Detroit line

Grumbacher tube

Everything metal down to the pigments in my watercolors.

Corpus corrosion

Dogmas of dirt

Mysteries burrow the silt and leaves

Only as far as it creeps the tires of time.

Tree trunk, fender and chrome

One grows between as the other’s left alone,

For decades.

Feet tread

The rotten leaves

Eyes scan

The warping curves

And heart leaps

From headlight to headlight

Yet, rust in my face still tastes like crap

But the prize I retrieve is worth the twist.

Like the relics of the saints

In cathedral altars,

This pilgrimage lies

Not in the Hebrides of the verdant Isles

But here...

Here amongst the rusting as the Matin mists rise

And where the trees form their gothic arches.

December 26, 1995