Each calcite cave-pearl clanks against its neighbor,the what-if eventually connected to the no-never.Eat one—swallow it so it can gestate or fallapart in your stomach. Approximate gem.Like a candy necklace, sweet circleby circle, the chain dissolves over enoughtime, leaving you without options,though you can pretend you chose.Each imagined child is a talisman, Catholic scapularrubbing your neck, piece of felt you must keepin good repair. No, not that easy—they’rethe shrieks on the wind, a playgrounda half mile away and cradled in the valley’s acoustics.Use these topaz earplugs to stop the noise.
Barren Trinkets
Lisa Ampleman
Feature Date
- May 26, 2024
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Ampleman, Lisa. “Barren Trinkets.” MOM IN SPACE, Louisiana State University Press, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 by Lisa Ampleman.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Lisa Ampleman is the author of three full-length books of poetry, including Mom in Space (forthcoming 2024) and Romances (2020), both with LSU Press, and Full Cry (NFSPS Press, 2013), as well as a chapbook, I’ve Been Collecting This to Tell You (Kent State UP, 2012). She lives in Cincinnati and is the managing editor of The Cincinnati Review and poetry series editor at Acre Books.
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Louisiana State University
“In these moving and incisive poems and essays, body and planet are intertwined, mother and astronaut orbit one another, and the everyday and the miraculous are one and the same. Like a skilled pilot, Lisa Ampleman expertly navigates through fertility clinics and lunar lava tubes, through Minecraft and spacecraft, through history and memory and earthrise.”
—Catherine Pierce
“Mom in Space intertwines lyricism and sonic play alongside a deep investigation of the history of space flight and the men and women who’ve left the earth and come back changed. It’s a riveting consideration of the threats to life on our planet and the thrills and consequences of our desire to explore the worlds beyond.”
—Nancy Reddy
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