Catalog Note: Article of Venusian Handicraft

Micron photograph, breast cancer cell

Stemless, you burgeon from your roots,

an amnesiac orchid, petals puzzled into collapse.

The black and white photo confers an extraterrestrial

nostalgia upon your labella and petioles;

an artifact of Venusian handicraft: primitive

gasweaving, stardust macramé.

                                                              You are shirred

and fine-stitched, silk-knot seed planted deep

within the sunless hour. Prune-tipped, seven-

fingered hands worked the grey into you:

you are comet ash, spacejunk shadow, the place

where color fears to go. Someone had given the nuns

from your native island a thread-bobbin and a starchart;

by the time the sidereal year was out they’d covered

the harbor docks and jetties in a cataract

of parallax lace. There was no unmaking you then.

In time your sulfuric cloques and goffers smothered

the planet wholesale, the sisters long-since strangled

in your threads: who needed makers once you’d learned

to spin yourself into wefthood?

                                                              Your new world

became bright and hot and untouchable.

Malignant frippery, even now you grow fat above our hearts.

You ornament us with retrograde satellites.