Introducing a new series of poems by Julian Matthews. Julian is a writer and Pushcart-nominated poet published in The American Journal of Poetry, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Borderless Journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Dream Catcher Magazine, Live Encounters Magazine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and The New Verse News, among others. He is a mixed-race minority from Malaysia and lived in Ipoh for seven years. Currently based in Petaling Jaya, he is a media trainer and consultant for senior management of multinationals on Effective Media Relations, Social Media and Crisis Communications. He was formerly a journalist with The Star and Nikkei Business Publications Inc

Link: https://linktr.ee/julianmatthews

By Julian Matthews

1: My mother had a relationship with a snake. I don’t say this lightly or in jest. She really believed in it. Once, when I came home to inform her I was getting married, she said the “pahm-bu”, had already visited and told her the news. Similarly, when we were expecting our first child, she already knew — the snake had delivered the message. I never questioned it. When I was 13, we lived in a row of terrace houses that had an abandoned area behind that was covered in undergrowth, which attracted all sorts of creepy crawlies to the extended back kitchen. One day, we discovered a black cobra had made its home in a hole next to the drainpipe in mum’s kitchen. I remember the drama of coaxing it out with hot water, with each of us armed with something: a bat, broomstick, cangkul and parang ready to strike, and screaming as it slid out and raised its hooded head, and somehow all of us missed the target, until my mother stepped in and sliced it clean through. She was always decisive that way. Never showed fear. Made me suck it up when I came crying from a fall or a cut, and sending me off, amid the snot and tears, to go get the plaster and Mercurochrome myself from the medicine cabinet. She did hug and show deep affection, like most mothers, but only when I was little. But I sensed immediately she regretted killing the cobra. She was Hindu by birth and converted to Catholicism when she married dad. The killing of a snake, even watching it being killed, is a bad omen. She must have made amends later, as is the custom, to future snakes that showed up. I don’t remember her ever killing another, so the snake or snakes that came after must have come, delivered the message, and left in peace. I never knew whether the snake delivered only good news though. She would never tell us, anyway, if it were bad news.

2: Some time later, there was a local story which made world news of a rubber tapper being squeezed to death by a huge python. Another man had stumbled upon the scene when the snake was in mid-swallow, its mouth stuck around the shoulder blades. It literally had bitten off more than it could chew. And it was later killed. My dad read the story out loud to us with a mixture of awe and sly humour. Of course, later there was a consult with the pink 4D book with the fierce Chinese god in front that had tiny drawings which corresponded with four-digit numbers. You looked up a drawing, usually if it came to you in a dream, and tried your luck at the Empat Nombor Ekor shops. I don’t think the snake number brought dad any luck, no matter how many combinations of it he tried. Just like the unlucky, hapless tapper who couldn’t be revived.

3: My mother has passed on for over nine years now. The other day, my wife had a vivid dream of her which she remembered. She said my mum was hugging me tightly, something we rarely did when I turned adult. I wondered then whether there were snakes in heaven. And whether one came to her again, sending us a message through a dream. Maybe it was good news, maybe it was bad. We know mothers, and all dogs, as a matter of principle are sent to heaven when they pass. But what about snakes? Is there a place even for them there too? Years ago, when I told the story of Adam and Eve to my children, I thought after the fall, that the snake, logically, had to follow them out of Eden. Who would the snake torment or tempt in Paradise left by itself? No snake is an island.

4: And I wondered about all the snakes in my life, the reptilian, and the two-legged kind. Whether it was worth forgiving and reaching out, or just moving on without the drama, without the need to assuage and make amends. Maybe it’s the uncoiling of these times that has left some of us spiralling into apathy: less serpent, more servient. Some days, I have enough snake in me to swallow me whole. Most days, I just want to curl up, and be left alone. And then it occurred to me, maybe there was never a snake in my mother’s back kitchen after all. She just used the story to remind me that there is a bit of snake in all of us. Sometimes, the snake in us makes us hiss, bite, tempt or torment others. Sometimes, it can constrict or wind us up. Maybe, to move forward, all we need to do is make the choice to shed old skins and be remade anew. Maybe, the snake is just here to be the bearer of the message – the lesson from all this death and dying – and like my mother, we need to make peace with it and let it go. Maybe, we just need to listen to the sound of our own rattle and find our way back to Eden: and never, ever again kill the messenger.

First published in the National and International Goddess Festival 2025 anthology, USA, edited by Debbie Tosun Kilday and available on Amazon at https://a.co/d/iBKJVhS

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