Venus 3/3
Magellan Flirts With Venus
I am proof that adventure
is still the booster rocket of myth
yet only small change at the foot
of a goddess.
You watched me tack my way here
reading the furrows of solar wind
until my auto-phase in Mission Control
steered me into respectful orbit
and I want a touch-down to danger
after you scatter the clouds between
your knees, promising to dismiss
your bodyguards, freeing us
to do what mortals can only
dream of in evening star phase.
The hormones surge on
long after the worms have finished
so my anodized skin won’t let us
down when your heat begins to bite.
Or is this just my dizzy solar cells
making fun of bronze?
My Evening Star
Venus. Venus. Some nights I would escape from our flat to a park with trees that blocked out the street lights just so I could gaze up at her. How she could be a planet and the Evening Star? A goddess veiled in gases that were beautiful from afar but poison to anyone who ventured too close.
I imagined her as my birth mother. Watching over me before fading into a dark hood of stars. She’d made her choice, but her secret would be safe with me.
She was pure art before the thunder. And she had not forgotten me.
Venus had no moons, so I wanted to believe my mother had no other children. She would know better than to disturb a perfect dream.
My First Venus
Another Eileen, my cousin by adoption. The daughter of Sarah, the youngest on Frieda’s side.
Sarah was a bit of a beauty herself, and her jet-black hair suited her as the black sheep of the family. There’d been a husband, years before I came on the scene, but no one spoke of him. Until Frieda in one of her rages let slip that he wasn’t Jewish, to which Sarah replied ‘if only that had been the worst thing about him!’ More secrets.
Eileen wore her hair in ringlets. They went so tight that I told her she could bounce on her head.
She laughed until the tears flowed. I was only six at the time, but I knew true love.
I showed her all my secret places. I still remember her lips, so red against her pale skin, and how she awakened something in me that I couldn’t name.
But then Frieda would fight with the family again, and I would not get to see Eileen for months. I passed the time in interstellar space by drawing sketches of her, hundreds of them, then tearing them up before Frieda could accuse me of betraying her.
Was she worried we might become kissing cousins? Probably. I knew it would be wicked, and that made it all the more exciting.
But my drawings came to nothing. Eileen and I grew apart, and eventually she married Robert Shapiro, who I’d hated at Temple School. I simply couldn’t understand how my dream girl could have fallen so low.
I met them once again before I moved away from Cleveland. I couldn’t fault Robert. And Eileen seemed happy enough. Her skin was even paler than I remembered, and she’d taken up smoking, which kept her trim, if not fit.
We had a laugh about women who had to take up Pilate after they gave up smoking, and we promised to write to each other regularly.
Venus Talks
When you’re young, it doesn’t matter how long the evening shadows are. Your body pulls out all the stops to attract, and a smile is enough to airbrush your imperfections away.
It’s the time of your life that prompt love songs and naked poetry. Moments that bring a prince to heel, or spur a Trojan Horse. While you make an art of indifference.
Children? If I thought of them at all, it was as a fingerprint not a goal. And yet there was a thrill, risking the roulette pistol. I never imagined I could run out of breath before sunset.
Arrow