ARRANGED MARRIAGE

by Lavinia Kumar

Pluto and Charon. (Getty Images) “…researchers reported that in the early stages of formation Charon and Pluto came together and orbited as one, swapping some materials before separating. They call this cosmic dance a “kiss and capture” event…” —Yahoo! News, January 9, 2025

It was no secret Charon and Pluto

had an arranged marriage.

Neither knew the other

before the aunties agreed

stars and family were aligned.

 

Charon brought her dowry,

and with much ceremony

they were wed, the entire

Kuiper village at the nuptials

 

But, alas, it was a fraught marriage—

Pluto, unhappy, decided to undo 

this union. Naturally, he decided

to keep the dowry brought by Charon, 

those valuable diamonds,

that cache of ice.

 

Then, unfortunately, the divorce 

was not agreed to, was discouraged,

by families on both sides. And so, 

for eternity, these two unhappy beings 

are together. And apart.  

Both unhappy.

 

They had no children.

See Lavinia Kumar’s three food stories in Issue Five of Ruby Literary Press, The Monsoon Rain winning a 2024 Pushcart nomination.

THE PROMISE OF NOTRE DAME

by Micheline Ishay

Notre Dame over Paris towered.  
Her spire inspired and empowered,           
Sheltering the beggars across time. 
Shockingly, a fire burned its spine.            
The top fell: crackling, 
Crashing, and blazing…                               
 
Such collapses come always fast,
As other tragedies of recent past.
Plagues, floods, and worsening storms. 
The plundered planet in an altered form.
Choking air, winds swirling,                        
Sweltering, drowning…
 
Wars destroy lives even faster, 
Slaughter peace-loving dancers,
Bury children under rubble,
Entrap peace in an endless tunnel. 
The music was thrilling, 
Then shooting and shrieking…
 
Their screams drowned underground, 
Lost in Pluto’s crowded underworld. 
Vile geniuses dug a cave of hell  
While humanity failed to prevail.                                                   
Wrath unleashed the dogs of war, 
Fangs flashing, growls and gore.                             
 
In the “City of Lost Children,”
Thieves stole youthful dreams
Staving off aging by any means.
Schooling generations for revenge.
In cycles of never-ending violence
Interrupted by dreadful silence.
                                                
They say miracles cannot be ignored.                    
Notre Dame is almost restored; 
Its iconic rooster found under debris,
Remade for a world to be free.
It took less than a day to crumble, 
But years for artisans to reassemble.
 
A step at a time: 
Sweating, Swearing,

Longing, Laughing, laughing… 

Micheline Ishay is Professor of International Studies and Human Rights at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. She is Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and was founding Director of the International Human Rights Program. She is the author of half a dozen of books, including Internationalism and Its Betrayal (University of Minnesota Press, 1995), The Nationalism Reader (Humanities Press, 1995; Prometheus, 1999), and The Levant Express: The Arab Uprisings, Human Rights, and the Future of the Middle East (Yale University Press, 2019). Her books, The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era (2004, 2008) and The Human Rights Reader: Major Political Essays, Speeches, and Documents from Ancient Times to the Present (1997, 2008, 2022) have been translated into multiple languages and published in second or third editions. 

THE UNBELIEVABLE

by Anne Graue

Werner Jaisli constructed the 'ovniport' after claiming to have received a 'telepathic message' from aliens. Consisting of a circle of white and brown rocks shaped like a star, the unusual 'landing pad' measures approximately 48 meters in diameter and is situated in the small town of Cachi in the province of Salta. Image Credit: CC BY 2.0 nraliessi / Flickr via Unexplained Mysteries, August 28, 2017

Lights in the forest spun, burned the grass. The buzzing sound has never left my ears.

I wake up every morning exhausted, smell sulfurous fog, and know that a ship is in the distance,

maybe on another continent; could be here any minute, take me away, bring me

back. No one would be the wiser.

My mother listened to a radio

program that shared  earth's mysteries

I have always known that the Loch Ness Monster was real; I yearned to witness the head

and neck rising out of the water, a scaly throwback to ancient times. Now I watch Nessie

CAM,  find documentaries about aliens, giant sea monsters swimming in the waters

off  many coasts, and I believe those who claim to have seen these things so obscure and yet

so prevalent, even with a beer and bad camera in hand.

How can so many claim to see what does not exist?

Where are the giant squid?

Scientists create documentaries, separate fact from fiction, the wheat from the chaff, searching

for the monster under the bed, the Yeti in the Himalayas; Sasquatch, and the Zone

of Silence; the Chupacabra, in Mexico and parts of Texas, kills livestock, drinks blood, leaves

nothing but empty shells, carcasses. We seem to have faith in existence without evidence.

She said that someone in Russia found Hell, could hear the screams and suffering

with a device lowered to the depths of, well, Hell, under the earth's crust,

where it ought to be, where they said it was. 

So we believe that Sasquatch roams the Oregon forests, the Mothman climbed a bridge

in West Virginia, people have been abducted by extraterrestrials, returned naked to their homes.

Another day she told me Bigfoot traveled through dimensions so would never

be found; that is why he is elusive to capture. When he reappears he may be

a Yeti or he may be the man who claims that he was in the famous Sasquatch film

shown in every documentary. So there it is.

UFOs hover over Phoenix, housewives on Bravo are real, and women are always

the ones who snap.

God

Allah

Buddha

I know what I know.

The ovniport in Argentina lays in wait for the ship to return, and a Nebraska farmer

drives at dusk from fields of hay neatly bailed, sees lights streak across the sky

as if they foretold a story, his story and how he came from a sky of meteors

and constellations, where Pluto was always a planet, and the Big Bang was mute. 

Anne Graue is the author of a chapbook, Fig Tree in Winter (Dancing Girl Press), and has published poems in literary journals and anthologies, includingThe Book of Donuts (Terrapin Books), Blood and Roses: A Devotional for Aphrodite and Venus (Bibliotheca Alexandrina), Gluttony (Pure Slush Books),The Plath Poetry Project, One Sentence Poems, Random Sample Review, Into the Void Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly, New Verse News, and Rivet Journal. Originally from Kansas, she lives in New York where she reviews poetry for the Saturday Poetry Series atAsitoughttobe.com and literary magazines and chapbooks for NewPages.com.

THE HEART IN DARKNESS

by Geoffrey A. Landis

Image source: New Horizons Spacecraft Displays Pluto’s Big Heart

Geoffrey A. Landis is a scientist, a science fiction writer, and a poet. As a science fiction writer, he's written over fifty short stories and one novel, which have appeared in over 20 languages.  As a poet, he has written numerous poems, and has a new collection, The Book of Whimsy, coming out at the end of July.  As a scientist, he works at NASA John Glenn Research Center on exploring Mars and developing new technology for space. 

TO JAMES TATE

by Martha Deed

Image source: Tin House

To James Tate who died ‒ The New York Times and other places say
"after a long illness" at age 71, it is certain, Mr. Tate, that you are not dead
because the poet James Tate, the man this obit purports to bury
is a man wild with words and metaphors and would not "die after a long illness,"
but expire actually only after being hit by a meteor in broad daylight
while taking a break in a green, white, and yellow striped canvas covered, oak-
framed lawn chair purchased for a dollar at the very same tag sale where the coffee blender
was offered ‒ insultingly ‒ to anyone willing to take it off the crazy seller's hands
for free and now it appears that the coffee blender should have been accepted for the rotten
gift it seemed and no money should have changed hands over the lawn chair whose faded
cover harbored screws rusted at the core that sent the poet into oblivion just as he was
contemplating the next line in his next new poem the perfect nonsense of a next line replete
with toy guns and real ammunition unearthed by a small boy with dark skin and brown eyes
whose future would include 1600 on his college boards and admirable physics scores as well
who would grow up thinking a trip to Pluto was not out of the question whose inquisitive
nature matched James Tates' who cannot be dead at the premature age, barely biblical age,
of 71. We do not believe this, because we are great admirers of James Tate and we know
he does not have much truck with death and, in fact, he welcomes conversations with dead
men whom he meets at every opportunity and whom he challenges to live past their prime
even as they peer down his fevered throat and declare a person hopeless while extracting
every dime from their wallets and this in 1976 before the rest of us understood doctors
or invented Safe Patient Projects or petitioned Congress for relief which Tate already
knew ‒ before 1976 ‒ was at best a captious notion indeed, for Tate was a wise man
who understood it is every man for himself in this ungainly world and the women are smart
but the men are the drivers and often deaf to women who advise them to avoid the potholes
and bumps in the road and the men age and look gray and grumpy and finally the women
capitulate and love them anyhow because those silly old men remind them of Black-capped
Gnatcatchers rare in Arizona but cousins of a comfort commonplace Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
in the white birches in their front yard at home in North Tonawanda by the sea.


Martha Deed is the keeper of a tumblr blog Sporkworld and has published several poetry collections.  Her most recent is Climate Change (Foothills Publishing, 2014).

PLUTONIC

by Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote

A pair of small alien worlds, Ceres and Pluto, move into the spotlight this year as spacecraft arrive at their cosmic shores for the first time. NASA's Dawn spacecraft released its first views of Ceres on Monday, already hinting at previously unknown craters. Still ahead for NASA's New Horizons probe is former planet Pluto, billions of miles from Ceres and the king of a distant, icy realm. Both are dwarf planets, mini-worlds that just don't make the cut as official planets. It's a vast population of worldlets that scientists don't know much about. But if all goes according to plan, that will change starting now. And it's about time the little guys got some attention. --Nadia Drake for National Geographic, January 21, 2015

In square world spherical obliqueness

Dwarf planet Pluto asteroid Ceres

Obscure classic rock ‘n roll giants

Water vapor rising icy volcanism

What lies beneath iron core

Subsurface ponds lakes seas oceans

Flood of data requires validation

Icy outnumbering terrestrial gassy rocky

Pluto’s moons atmosphere bending sunlight

Charon Hydra Nix Styx Kenderos

Pluto twice size of Charon

Unjust travesty stripped of planethood

Largest outer solar system dependent

Reigns slightly ahead of Eris

Orbit so elongated crisscrossing domains

Categorically downgraded blacklisted by ex-spurts

Eight full-fledged planets enduringly survive

Pneumonic spoiled My Very Energetic

Mother Served Us Nine Pizzas

Outcast suffering complex inequality complex

Tipsy topsy-turvy cosmic seesaw consciousness

Science séance predicting what’s next

New Horizon groundbreaking astrogasm discoveries

Mistaken identity Status Quo-Vadis regained

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1