Lisa Ampleman

Venus

My daughter-never-born is throwing snow.

She’s dropping crystals

from clouds of sulfuric acid.

They glisten like knives, swirl

in the solar winds. Each flake hovers

over the ground before disappearing

into vapor. She smirks at her trickery,

conjuring something

that changes form so quickly.

The volcanic plains

are dry, oceans long gone.

Water’s hydrogen untangled

itself from oxygen, was sucked

into space. A planet

needs a magnetic field to support life.

A daughter needs an atmosphere

cool enough to breathe, not one

hot enough to melt lead. A daughter

needs to move from mirage

to materiality to be named.

Lisa Ampleman is the author of two books of poetry, Romances (LSU Press, 2020) and Full Cry (NFSPS Press, 2013), and a chapbook, I’ve Been Collecting This to Tell You (Kent State UP, 2012). Her poems have appeared in journals such as Image, Kenyon Review Online, Poetry, Poetry Daily, Southern Review, and 32 Poems. She lives in Cincinnati, where she is the managing editor of The Cincinnati Review and poetry series editor at Acre Books. She has a weakness for Swedish Fish and Twizzlers.