M. A. ISTVAN JR. is a zodiac surgeon and respected board member of the National Council for Geocosmic Research. Whereas most other zodiac surgeons are equipped to shift your sign only one position forward, Istvan can shift your sign either one position forward or—barring the unlikely circumstance that you are a menopausal Pisces with a quadruped gait—even one position back. Istvanhopes that increased awareness about zodiac surgery will help bring in the funding required for researching zodiac sign transplantation, which ideally will allow a shift to any of the twelve signs in a matter of hours (as opposed to the years it takes currently to shift just one spot). As Istvan recently revealed in an interview with Shadow Transits, he envisions a future where there will be a zodiac donor box on driver’s licenses.

In a Former Life

Inside the temple of the supreme invisible
I fail at imagining nothing. Before me
the bare ass of India is unpeeled from its
blood-orange wrap. It curries the nose
of a seated foreigner. The stroking nymph

turns her dark face, unpierced, over shoulder
to find me taken up. Smirking lips of fig, fixed
in contrast to the pulsing lamb cut, seem meant
to say the impossible for one yet stretch-marked
in thighs: that we had met once before.