Second Planet
You appeared at the dinner party
just when the tender sky went gold and green and blue.
“Sister planet,” I said (a little too loudly).
The other guests receded to distant orbits.
as your sulfur heat sank my stockings down my thighs
and coiled the hair at my temples.
I saw what volcanoes might do if I got close enough.
For once I thought I’d seduce
someone, spin your crescent round to full light,
teach astronomers what a telescope is for.
But what do I know? Two days later
(a year and a half on Earth)
your opaque sheen reflects back my desire
politely. Seems the heat was not an invitation.
| Meg Yardley |
|
levelheaded: Second Planet
It takes a moment to adjust to this poem’s central metaphor because both the tenor (the would-be lover) and the vehicle (the planet) of the metaphor are (literally) worlds away from each other. In this way, the poem shows us how dissonance can reward our attention. Specifically, we engage with a speaker who compares an unremarkable dinner party to the movements and gyrations of the solar system.
Let’s start with the poem’s narrative. First, the speaker sees the poem’s “you” at said dinner party. The speaker recognizes this person as a “Sister planet.” She is enamored with this person, describing someone who emanates sexuality, who “sank my stockings down my thighs / and coiled the hair at my temples.” The speaker decides to seduce this person, but after some time, she learns she has been refused.
All things considered, it’s a pretty low stakes course of events. But this speaker notches it up to planetary proportions. The “Second Planet” of the title is Venus – the second planet from the sun, the only planet for which two days would last “a year and a half on earth.” This speaker would manipulate planetary orbits, would “spin your crescent round to full light,” to get closer to the object of her affection. The speaker’s passions are embodied by “volcanoes” and “sulfur heat.” They reach into the realm of physics and chemistry. They reach toward mathematical fate. Part of the poem’s pleasures come in figuring out how to work through the poem’s overblown comparison. What does it mean that the poem’s “you” is compares to a planet? What does it mean to call someone a “Sister planet?” Does the mathematical reality of a planetary orbit mean the poem’s potential lovers are destined to circle each other until a final, devastating, world-ending collision?
Through this hugeness, the poem doesn’t forget its very human, very small, concerns. The poem’s interplanetary scale highlights that the speaker’s rejection is relatively minor. In a skillful turn, we learn the speaker has been refused “politely.” In this moment, the speaker comes to terms with her emotions. The “sulfur heat” has dissipated. The passions are gone. The speaker is back to operating on a human scale. Ultimately, this is a poem of disappointment – an emotion that can crush us, but that often means we’ve come full circle to just where we started our orbit.
-The Editors
