Introducing a new series of poems by Julian Matthews. Julian is a writer and Pushcart-nominated poet published in The American Journal of Poetry, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Borderless Journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Dream Catcher Magazine, Live Encounters Magazine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and The New Verse News, among others. He is a mixed-race minority from Malaysia and lived in Ipoh for seven years. Currently based in Petaling Jaya, he is a media trainer and consultant for senior management of multinationals on Effective Media Relations, Social Media and Crisis Communications. He was formerly a journalist with The Star and Nikkei Business Publications Inc
Link: https://linktr.ee/julianmatthews
By Julian Matthews
Your skin is papery. White, malleable.
Perhaps with the right creases you could be
A bird. Still. Unflappable.
A blank page, lines unwrit,
yet you do not fit into any oblong:
A4, letter, legal, plain. A complicated fold,
maybe, it would take a book to explain.
A page ripped from a journal.
Crumpled. Tossed in a bin.
Begin. Again. Re-create.
What are we all if not books on a shelf,
sometimes leaning on each other,
sometimes standing alone.
The Great Librarian never labeled us,
and yet we all find time to stick labels
on each other like dewy-eyed decimals.
Unboxed, unwrapped, stamped, stacked.
Yet to be discovered. The lucky ones:
borrowed, turned, read, re-turned.
The unlucky ones – shelved.
“We read to know we are not alone,” says CS Lewis.
We write to belong to the unknown.
First published in The MacGuffin Literary Journal Vol 40.2, USA, available at https://www.schoolcraft.edu/macguffin/
