Matthew M C Smith is a Jedi Master in a parallel universe. He first saw Star Wars in 1984, when his older sister won tickets through a coloring competition in the local paper. Having only seen Bambi before, Return of the Jedi was overwhelming. Matthew has a complete first run of Star Wars figures and has some of the Last 17, requiring a second mortgage to complete all figures. Matthew’s favorite figures are Luke Jedi and Yakface. He has ambitious to fly a real X-wing fighter.

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Editor’s Note: Though ERR primarily publishes short-form poetry, I have made an exception with these wonderful pieces from Matthews for our special “May the fourth be with you” theme this month. Enjoy!

My throat has burn marks from that war

My bedroom, with its creaking floorboards, is noisy with the sound of copper pipes, which hiss and bubble and gurgle, day and night. The boiler is behind my bed. I have a chest of drawers crammed in and stacked boxes of toys. 

 In this room, I plot the downfall of Vader. He’s a 3.75 inch plastic figure, toppled on the windowsill, facing upwards in his stiff, vinyl cape. Out of his arm, a telescopic, red lightsaber protrudes. 

Next to him, there are stormtroopers with blasters in their hands, secured by blu tack; one toppled, face-down, the other standing up facing me. I take He-Man, Battle Cat and Orko away from them, ensuring separation between their fictional worlds.

It’s late evening, moonlight through the trees. I pull the airplane bedspread up to my eyes, thinking about school and how I stuttered in class today; I think of how I can’t say Darth, that hard ‘D’, my failure with all ‘D’ words for that matter, and ‘B’ words; can’t really say ‘Ben’, for ‘Ben Kenobi’, unless it’s one fast breath and I slump under my blanket, half-hidden at the end of the house in my solitary corner of shame. 

In this place, I cease to hunt myself but bad thoughts intrude.  I think of the hard words, which I can sometimes nail on a rushed breath, yet other words judder. I can say the hard words on my own or under my breath but not in front of other people unless I am lucky. Sometimes, I summon the force and if that force is strong at that minute, that hour, that day, the struggle abates. Here, all on my own, with my bedspread right up to my eyes, I wonder why I have this condition and think about what a horrible word ‘stutter’ is? 

The moonlight is a pale fan on the wall. I blink at it slowly.

Night terrors: running through the corridors of the Death Star, legs pumping, heart racing, body soaked through with sweat, dodging hoover-sized droids whizzing about and Imperial Guards with shackled aliens. No way in, or out and, in a frenzy, I’m blasting back at Stormtroopers and Imperial Commanders through plumes of smoke and way back I see the beetle-like helmet of Vader and his black cape. Ahead of me, I hit General Veers on his shoulder, firing violent, juddering Bs and Ds from my mouth. Again, B B B B, D D D D. General Veers sinks to his knees, clasping his burnt shoulder with his gloved hand.

My hard consonants are ex-plosive. I choke out G G Gs, destroying a frontline of Stormtroopers running towards me.  I stop, stand my ground, reach out at them straining with every fibre of my being, their blasts rebounding against my Jedi force-field but it is getting too much. I feel a counter-force, my own power challenged and the sensation of it getting weaker. More B B Bs and D D Ds take them out but I feel Vader’s choke-hold get to me. 

Almost taken by the force of the choke, I cast back ‘O’s at Vader, Os that bulletspeed through the air resisting his overwhelming power. My throat is in a grip, a tightening knot. The VHS tape of my Death Star dream judders in the player, run through with interference, a zip on the screen for a second or two, damage in the tapefilm. Then, the film jumps to me running towards the dock of the Millennium Falcon, where I’m hit in the neck, blaster-burns in  neck and throat, hot torches scorching skin. Can’t breathe, can’t speak, falling… 

a boy has fallen on the ramp of a space shuttle, clasping his neck. Almost from nowhere, an ageing, cloaked man comes through a blue portal of light. He takes the boy up in his arms staggering to a crescendo of John Williams music. The audience watching this for the second time knows this is the father of the stricken jedi, that he is a flickering hologram. He drags his son onto the vessel throwing back a shining chrome grenade. In the ship, he thumps control panels and the ramp closes. 

As the cloaked man pilots the Falcon through interstellar dreamspace, I see through his hands, chest, with its steady-thump of a knot-heart; he ghosts and flickers in the air like gas-flame – the image of my father and Alec Guinness as Kenobi. I‘m coughing up blood, blobs of blackening crimson, as a medical droid sews, stitches and hyper-cools muscle and skin. 

FatherGhostKenobi says two words, expressionless. Tenderness from a hologram is like a pulse detected from the southern glaciers of Hoth, his words, measured, low, as he turns back towards the stars:

‘My boy’. 

The needles of the droid micro-knit knit flesh at the throat, micro-needles with minute precision.

Warped walls of a dream. FatherGhostKenobi in the cockpit, his jaw set, a thatch of sandy-grey hair, compact profile as he pilots the ship through the vastness of star systems, his head as fuzzing static at warp speed. 

My throat has burn marks from that war. It’s still moonlight and I am eyes through darkness again, searching the corners of this cell of a room like a hideout on Tatooine. Sometime later, I night-walk across the landing, past the bathroom, climb knee-first into my parents’ bed. I lay under my father’s arm as he murmurs. I drift through sleep in this escape pod and somewhere, galaxies, far away, Vader is spinning out of control in a damaged Tie Fighter and B B Bs, D D Ds and O O Os fizzle with the force in the corridors of George Lucas’s giant metal star.

***

Despite everything, you’re still that boy…

with the battle-damaged X-wing in his hands, orange Luke in the 
cockpit, heading for the steel canals of the Death Star on a torrid ride 
with the words of the force overtaken by a reverie of Alec Guinness as 
a blue hologram.

Despite everything, despite such confusion, this hurtling, headlong
hyperdrive of time, obliterating cores of memory, wrecks of space-junk
drifting, you’re still that boy with the Ewok figures in the forest moon 
of your garden talking feverishly, as your father digs, double digs, and
the bonfire crackles and smoke drifts across gardens.

Despite everything, you’re still that boy at night, hurtling through sleep 
and planted on your feet in a cape gripping a lightsabre with Gamorrean 
Guards advancing towards you in a vault in that palace echoing with
the deep-bellied reverberations of Jabba amidst the cacophony of the 
Max Rebo band.

Despite everything, figures stand on a shelf, here, fading, incremental 
plastic degradation and it feels like this is the way, the only way.

Junk spins, drifts; blue holograms sing against static. And some things 
keep and some things turn. In waste, we envision resurrection as Boba Fett
rises from the Sarlacc pit, clawing at sand, fistfuls of grit upwards, 
and we cheered all these years on.

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Publishing credits

“My throat has burn marks from that war” exclusive first publication by East Ridge Review
“Despite everything, you’re still that boy…” first published by Poetry Wales 59.1, Summer 2023