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
Remember how they took out dear Pluto?
It was there, embedded in memory,
one of the nine planets.
You didn’t need a mnemonic to remember it.
You couldn’t remember the names of the seven dwarves
or even the colours of the rainbow, in order,
but the planets, somehow, came easy,
and Pluto was the easiest.
Perhaps because it was the name of a Greek god
and Mickey’s silent dog.
Or maybe its smallness, being out there,
the furthest away, something you cared for–
just because.
But now demoted, labeled a dwarf,
and the cruelest insult of all,
reduced to a mere number: 134340.
Like a tattoo on a prisoner’s arm,
gulaged, made anonymous, remote.
Like being unfriended, blocked, privated.
I am distant, unreachable, a ghost.
But even ghosts have a way of always showing up
when you least expect it.
Ethereal, numinous, twinkling in the dark,
maybe even winking, orbiting your world
like a celestial body whose name you always knew,
could never forget and spinning,
always spinning.
First published in “Words on the Wire 2” anthology of the Chapter One writers group, edited by Sue Hill and Bob Walton of The Write Box and Super Culture, Britain.
