Pluto Retires (And During The Exit Interview Sits Near a Wide Window While Watching a Violence of Florida Rainbow Wreckage Unleash Its Storm Over an Empty Magic Kingdom)
– At first you might feel a little lost.
– Should I get a dog? I think I’ll need a dog.
– Un-Pluto yourself child.
– What about the mallards?
– They’re drifting behind someone else’s whiff of bruise.
– And the mouse?
– Down in the break-room taking off his head.
– Something seems to be calling me home.
– It’s your god-given face.
– And sex?
– Forever spinning in a tea-cup and hurling ’round the scary mountain.
– I think I’m going to miss those carousel horses…
– only if you keep pretending you’re the only one that knows their real names.
– And the Ethiopian nuns ice-cream licking?
– Even the gardener couldn’t rake out this poetry.
– It’s raining. Look at that rain.
– Time to hand in your costume child.
– So much has happened here.
– Go home and build a castle for it.
– Man’s rage seems to tumble from stammer to words to a mask
of shame.
– Forever and ever.
– No fairy dust for it?
– Never.
– And what about that monk who set himself on fire?
– In celebration of it all.
Micheal Martin is a writer, editor and film-maker living in North Carolina. His first collection of poetry, Extended Remark was published by Portals Press in 2015. For many years his poetry, feature-journalism and fiction have appeared in U.S. and European publications. Poems from his new poetry manuscript first appeared in literary journals such as American Journal of Poetry, Poetry Ireland, New Orleans Review, RHINO & Salamander, among many others. In 2021 he collaborated with the Irish film production company, Morgan Creative to produce and direct two poetry-films of his work which continue to be officially selected and awarded in international film festival competitions such as the most recent, Buenos Aires International Film Festival. For a decade Martin lived in Amsterdam where he was a feature writer with Amsterdam Weekly; in 2010 he edited the Harper’s anthology, Rules of the Game: The Best Sports Writing from Harper’s Magazine.