Can’t immortalize a god, but this queen likes
her likeness in verse, paint, cobblestone, spume.
For those who live forever, it’s important to get
Olympic in the popularity contest. The aetiology of
humans and art thus explains. No moon orbits
with cautionary tale, yet Venus, radiant in gold
tweed, sucks oysters until they quiver then chucks
the bustled shells to a gossip of swans. Witness
how with delicate umbra plump curve of lip peaks
when her fatale maw shucks a doe-eyed
challenger’s silhouette. Venus luminous. Venus
shadow bans. Heart’s blood her satin train bleeds
to a red carpet as she, morning starlet leading the
wedding party through the hydraulic press of night,
coal-stokes that beating furnace in your chest.
Eloping lovers strip in a potting shed at her behest,
raising their albedo into a runaway greenhouse effect.
Call it veneration. Call it need. Know it’s real love
because it’s inconvenient. Altar boys like aspidistra
satellites left in morning star limn, tolerant of neglect,
are confirmation that nice ones finish last. Good
girls rarely do. Free will and venereal hubris. Depressed
coronae caught by flash under the influence of someone’s
desire to die for you, but a high engagement rate means they’ll
be married soon. Feel the burn of good branding in flesh,
her active touch barely visible to the naked eye, even given
the gift of user insight. Pregnant silence births June-less
union. Stone bride, hasta la vista, hasta caelibaris loosely pinned
in her hair, bows before the scalloped margin domes
of the goddess’ cooled magma throne. Venus in vistas.
Venus decreed, with downturned palms the pearls that
bless future broods will flood with a feed of burst
persimmon a fragrant emblem of phosphine. Birthed
volcano with the toxic tart of sulfuric acid, our celestial
body of a lady aflame, eye-clung carnivorous Venus
thirst trap has no tectonic to post to, when the tesserae
backscatter chalk-stains her protégé’s hands in primordial
plaster. Mysterious beauty spot the farra on cheek.
Elitist megapascals. Supercritical heat. Galatea
and Pygmalion ocean-heave, wreathed in rose.
Does love crush so hard you can no longer breathe?
