Curie's List, Poem by Martina Litty
Curie’s List
By Martina Litty
VII.
My sister and her synesthesia say
that seven is a “dude,”
blue, like a rock thrush—
though maybe she doesn’t mention the bird;
that’s all me, all imagination and no sense—
“He’s mysterious and emo,” she says.
“Like, he would have a scene haircut
and a hooded jacket
if he were a person.”
She says, “He would probably have
a shitty car. Like your car.
Like a 2003 tan-ass car.
No offense.”
She’s got the year wrong—
mine’s a 2006—
but I can see him. Seven, I mean.
He’s got one hand on the steering wheel
and one hand out the window,
black nail polish,
bangs in his face,
and I am afraid he will crash
because he can’t see through his stupid haircut.
I am afraid he will crash on purpose.
VI.
Nitrogen, nitrogen,
nitrogen, nitrogen,
nitrogen, nitrogen,
nitrogen.
V.
It is 2013. Welcome to Warsaw.
We will hold climate change talks.
There will still be talking that goes nowhere
in the years to come. There will be talking
until the world stops.
Welcome to Warsaw.
Zjedz i wywierć dziurę w swoim żołądku.
Welcome.
Please enjoy your stay
but do not die here.
IV.
Marie Curie and I
share a birthday.
Nie wywołuj wilka z lasu—
but she does, and they bite her to death.
III.
Aplastic anemia killed her, technically.
When I daydream I imagine her there
in her research lab, cradling tools
with purposes too complicated for me to name,
and men walk circles around her,
all wolf and no boy,
and she lifts her radioactive children up
to the sun,
half out of the reach of the snapping jaws.
II.
Radiographics, x-rays, ion implanters,
cyclotrons, e-beam welders, e-beam probes.
I.
Pineapples
and their bromelains
will eat our tongues.
Martina Litty is a writer from Laurinburg, North Carolina. Her poems have appeared or will appear in Poets Reading the News, semicolon, Rat's Ass Review, and High Shelf Press, among others. Litty does, in fact, share a birthday with Marie Curie. Litty can be found on Twitter @martinalitty.
Inquiry
The following has been provided by the poet:
"Curie's List" was conceived after I found out that I share a birthday, November 7th, with Marie Curie. Around that time, I had been prompted to write a numbered list poem, and I'd already been planning on examining the number seven. After looking more into Curie's life and work, and after learning that the aplastic anemia she died from developed because of her exposure to radiation, the poem ballooned into some greater question I had about what to do when the thing you love is killing you. This broadened when I considered that, although Curie never directly worked on the Manhattan Project, her research on and work with radium and radiation contributed to the later development of the atomic bomb. I wove other undercurrents of destruction and creation into the poem in order to heighten these concepts.
In reading this poem you might consider the following questions: How do our identities impact our sciences? What do we bring to the laboratory table? While exercising our will on the world--through science or other means--are we destroying ourselves? Are we destroying each other? What is the relationship between love and death?