Ghost Planet

Back when Pluto wasn't a planet and all that

Can I live swinging like a planet

in an elliptical orbit

getting so very close,

then so far away, scientists question?

Books recalled to erase me out of them. My name

hissed at, an affront to the American.

A planet existed and almost touched them, warm.

Now the memory of me turned black.

Shoot the freezing breeze with Pluto,

and we swing on his porch swing,

a planet that doesn’t exist, the god of death, and me,

swinging back and forth. Persephone

comes out to check on us, sitting out in subzero

plains, an orphaned satellite. She should worry.

Late into the week-long evening,

we ever drunk -- to not exist, without strong whiskey,

deserves an oblong rock up a concurve hill.

Loneliness, isn’t, then. But he finally asks the question.

“Why do they push me so far away?” Pluto I mean.

It’s the orbit; there’s no such thing as centrifugal force.

Nothing ever pushes anyone away. Spinning; even as far

out as we are, swinging back and forth. That’s the away part.

But someone must be pulling back.

Reviews

[M. N. Tarrint]

I really liked this poem. I was upset when Pluto was rejected by the scientific community. Your words do well communicating the feelings of rejection and coldness, yet the celestial body still remains, connected by an insistent force of attraction. Don't know if i am picking up on any of the emotional intent of your poem but that is what i see.