Terry Lucas
Bio:
Terry Lucas is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Dharma Rain (Saint Julian Press, 2016) and In This Room (CW Books, 2016). The Thing Itself, a collection of new and selected poems with photographs by Gary Topper, including the three poems published in this issue of The Banyan Review, is forthcoming from Longship Press in November of 2020. His poems, essays, and memoir pieces appear in numerous journals including Alaska Quarterly Review, Best New Poets, Green Mountains Review, and Great River Review. Terry is a regular speaker at Dominican University of California’s MFA Program and a free-lance poetry coach. www.terrylucas.com.
By Any Other Name
August 2006
They voted Pluto off the list of planets,one less note in the music of the spheres.News of this reaches me too late to show up
for the debate and argue for snowball dwarfs, diminution, and eccentric orbs cutting through the plane of Neptune—instead
I will write this missive and read the annual reports, which I predict will change as bodies wobble their way in and out of favor. Also,
I will listen to the sound of my Applelaptop instead of my manual Remingtoncutting into twenty-pound paper, ink
filling in depressions and gashes on scrolled pages. What isn’t history? Orfor that matter, this story of changing
names and places, written in fading script,harvested from cuttlefish, octopi, and squidkilled in the midst of sepia clouds,
bodies luminescent after death—yesthere are nights you could read by the light cast upon Pluto by its full moon, Styx..
They voted Pluto off the list of planets,one less note in the music of the spheres.News of this reaches me too late to show up
for the debate and argue for snowball dwarfs, diminution, and eccentric orbs cutting through the plane of Neptune—instead
I will write this missive and read the annual reports, which I predict will change as bodies wobble their way in and out of favor. Also,
I will listen to the sound of my Applelaptop instead of my manual Remingtoncutting into twenty-pound paper, ink
filling in depressions and gashes on scrolled pages. What isn’t history? Orfor that matter, this story of changing
names and places, written in fading script,harvested from cuttlefish, octopi, and squidkilled in the midst of sepia clouds,
bodies luminescent after death—yesthere are nights you could read by the light cast upon Pluto by its full moon, Styx..
