Kurt Luchs

To the Tenth Planet

What do you look like?
We may never know.
Now I understand the man
who walks into a bar
just after the most beautiful
woman walks out: she has
become invisible but he
can feel her absence tugging
at everyone who remains.
Their tiny perturbations
leave no doubt that
something wonderful has left us
and still has the power
to move us.
Your gravity does this,
causing the outer bodies
of our solar system
to shiver ever so slightly,
though no one has actually seen you.
I call you the tenth planet
because I’ve not quite
got over Pluto’s pitiful demotion.
For me there can never
be another ninth.
Apparently you live
in the Kuiper Belt,
otherwise known as the Siberia
of our corner of the galaxy.
I’d welcome you warmly
to our little family of sun circlers,
except that would be
presumptuous and ignorant.
You’ve been here all along,
patiently waiting for your
beauty (yes, I’m sure now
it’s beauty) to be discovered.

Kurt Luchs (kurtluchs.com) won the 2019 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest, and has written humor for the New Yorker, the Onion and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. His first full-length poetry collection, Falling in the Direction of Up, is forthcoming from Sagging Meniscus Press. He lives and works in Red Wing, Minnesota.