radium

“Power"

Living in the earth-depositis of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power

-Adrienne Rich

****

Last week another woman won a Nobel Prize in chemistry, bringing the total number of female chemistry winners up to five. Five. Out of 180 total winners over a span of 117 years. 

We can do better, right? The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward women getting scientific accolades in equal numbers as men, right? Our pain and our hard work is equally recognized and valued, right? I used to think so, but then Donald Trump got elected president, and Brett Kavanaugh got confirmed as a supreme court justice, so who the heck knows.