October 27, 2015

Erin Noteboom

CURIE IN LOVE

If a radioactive substance is placed in the dark in the vicinity of the closed eye or of the temple, a sensation of light fills the eye.
—Marie Curie, doctoral dissertation, 1903

The sensation of light
is light. There is no way for her to know it.
She is so young and so in love, marrying
an equal, choosing for her gown a navy dress
suitable for use in laboratories. Hand in hand
they slip through the university courtyard—
Pierre and Marie Curie, in the world before the war.
One of our joys was to go into our workroom at night,
she wrote. To perceive on all sides
the feebly luminous silhouettes of the bottles
and capsules of our work. That light
marbles and embarnacles them both,
turns their fingers strange and fibrous.
Soon enough he cannot rise from bed.
It was really a lovely sight and always new to us.
She loses twenty pounds. Two pregnancies.
There is no way for her to know that her light
will soon paint gunsights and the dials of watches.
That it is ticking through her body, his body,
faster than time. What she has understood
is astonishing enough: the atom, active.
It is as if marbles were found to be breathing out.
As if stones were found to speak.
Sick and stumbling, Pierre is struck
by a cart of military equipage. He passes untouched
under the hooves of six horses. Untouched
between the front wheels, between the turns
of chance and miracle, before six tons
and the back wheel open his skull
and kill him instantly.
Thus closes the deterministic world.
Your coffin was closed and I could see you no more.
I put my head against it.
From the cold contact something like a calm
or intuition came to me.
She does not record him speaking.
That light. She had no way of knowing
it was ionizing radiation, entering the eye,
lighting the eye gel the way a cooling pool is lit
around a great reactor. Her hair was thick then,
and thickly piled. Her fingers smooth.
Her thighs like marble. She closes her eyes
and raises the vial.

from Rattle #49, Fall 2015
Tribute to Scientists

__________

Erin Noteboom: “I started university with a burning desire to study both poetry and physics. Sadly they make you pick, and I picked physics on the grounds that teaching myself about eigenvectors was kind of a tall order. I got all the way to a doctoral program before I realized I was wrong—it’s in poetry that I find my most startling equations. I write poetry and children’s fiction now, and work as a science writer.” (web)

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October 26, 2015

John Nimmo

ADVICE TO A NEW POSTDOC

From Bozeman airport they’ll take you
to the spill site, the one in your thesis. Expect
a long ride. The road turns to dirt;

the van will stop where a closed gate
blocks the road. The latch is one of those
that cowboys have cobbled together

with ever-increasing complexity since 1873
when barbed wire was invented:
an ungodly arrangement of levers, slots,

sliding bars, wire loops, and holes carved
in the wooden post. Jim and Al in back
will be busy wiring data-loggers.

They’ll glance at the gate, then at you.
Hop out. Walk slowly
while you note the hinges and the slope

of the ground. See if the gate swings only
one way and what the way is. Look
for the bar-in-slot or peg-in-loop or

hook-in-eye, or whatever
actually holds the gate closed. Find
what has to move first. Don’t fiddle, figure it out.

Pause if you need to. Remember prelims?
Prof asks a question, it’s OK to think a minute
before you answer, even get extra points

for the right look on your face. When
you’re sure or pretty sure, slide the bar,
pull the peg, lift the rod, turn the knob, whatever

it takes until the gate swings free. Stand by
as he drives through. Don’t smile. Nod
briefly, if you want. Close it, latch it.

Climb back in. Say nothing. Don’t smile.

from Rattle #49, Fall 2015
Tribute to Scientists

__________

John Nimmo: “I’m a scientist, specializing in the physics of environmental systems. And I’m a poet who loves using words to confront the material and immaterial, or what is obvious with what is self-contradictory. Most of the time I’m in Menlo Park, California, where I live with my wife Elsa. Sometimes I conduct field experiments in exotic tropical or desert locations, or, more frequently, at major hazardous waste sites. In poetry and in scientific research, there is always more to write about or to investigate, and no reason why the results of the creative effort cannot surpass the heights achieved before. These two realms relate in ways that are asymmetric but wonderfully strange and complementary. Experiencing poetry leads me to pursue the unexpected, recognize and nurture multiple levels of meaning, and expand mentally by grappling with divergent modes of reasoning—poetry makes me a better scientist.” (web)

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October 21, 2015

Peter Munro

IF THIS IS MIDDLE AGE THEN I’LL DIE AT 93.667

I’m old enough this horniness should lapse.
I’m told it will. Mortgage. College fund. Worry.
I’ve fallen into all the usual traps

guys fear: mid-level management, a dreary
cubicle (will the corner office be mine?
I’m told it will), mortgage, college fund, worry

that our five-year-old will poke out his eye
playing war or the treehouse might collapse
under our first-grader. My grand designs

(to win the World Cup, a Nobel and, perhaps,
impose world peace) are currently on hold.
I’m old enough this horniness should lapse

as well, should wilt away or come unsouled
from the body. Instead, the atoms that ferry
my life vibrate me till I am made bold,

electric with a steadily thrummed fury,
urgent to loosen the clips, cups, and straps
binding my wife’s breasts. Deftly, she parries

Destructo Rays that our five-year-old zaps
at us, fired across a toy-strewn battlefield.
I’ve fallen into all the usual traps:

contentment, comfort, the standard epic told
bardic: plans foiled, retreat, good guys harried
then bad guys driven back by our six-year-old,

everyone safe at last. I love, unwary.
I kiss my wife. The world may fall to scraps.
I’m told it will. Mortgage, college fund, worry:

I’ve fallen into all the usual traps.
I’m old enough. This horniness should lapse.

from Rattle #49, Fall 2015
Tribute to Scientists

[download audio]

__________

Peter Munro was the featured interviewee in this issue. A portion of that conversation will be posted tomorrow. In the meantime, visit his website for more of Munro’s work.

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October 20, 2015

Ruth Madievsky

TUNING FORK

Now I remember:
I was telling strangers at the birthday party
about all the ways in which our cells
are trying not to be forest fires.
How inside each cell is a tuning fork
and inside each tuning fork,
the coiled music of our DNA.
I was floating somewhere between
the beer cooler and the red eyes
of three cigarettes
the way I imagine silk floats
inside a spider.
Inside, my friend was calling his mother
in the bathroom, while outside,
the woman he wanted to love
picked a hole in her tights.
I was close enough to catch
the blue smoke
that escaped her like a bird,
which was closer than the distance
between the benzodiazepine in my pocket
and the back of my throat.
I was thinking about how I am always
running towards or away from myself.
Why I keep opening my eyes
underwater, what I hope to see.
We picked at a cake
someone bought at a supermarket,
toasted to mercy
though none of us knew what it meant.
My friend told me he wished
for someone to treat his body
like a public park.
I’m sick of careful, he said,
which got me thinking about why
I feel some days like a narrowly avoided bike accident,
and on others like I have been tree-ringed
by the man who took my silence
to mean yes.
Which I guess is like asking
why the mind has a shorter memory
than the body.
Whether the language of the body
could ever fit inside a throat.

from Rattle #49, Fall 2015
Tribute to Scientists

__________

Ruth Madievsky: “I’m a doctoral student at the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy and a research assistant at an HIV clinic specializing in maternal care in Downtown Los Angeles. My philosophy on the intersection of medicine and poetry is this: medicine lets us live; poetry gives us a reason to. In the words of Hervé Guibert, ‘In writing I am always both the scientist and the rat he slits open to do his research.’” (web)

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October 19, 2015

Julie Bloss Kelsey

FOUR HAIKU

at the barre
the graceful arms
of a spiral galaxy

 

 

 

a touch of sleet—
my son’s voice
deepens

 

 

 

beneath the pines
decomposing layers
of music 

 

 

 

carcinoma
so easy to spot
on her death certificate

from Rattle #49, Fall 2015
Tribute to Scientists

__________

Julie Bloss Kelsey: “I hold a BS in the biological sciences and a master’s in environmental management, specializing in soil contamination and water resources. For eight years, I worked for the state of Missouri evaluating potential hazardous waste sites under the federal Superfund Program. When I write haiku, I like to use words that are scientifically precise. I enjoy blurring the lines between common and scientific usages of words.” (website)

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October 15, 2015

Ilana Kelsey

GRANDMOTHER:

You looked at me and saw my mother’s face.
We thought old age meant occasional slips—
back then, we didn’t know that this was grace.

When we were all younger, you would chase
me through the parks, swing me onto your hip,
and smile down into my well-loved face.

We rode the flying Dumbos (and not Space
Mountain) and I got a Minnie with pink lips.
How could I know at four that this was grace?

Now you hug your own stuffed bear, to chase
away apathy. Or despair. Your grip on time shifts;
today you don’t know my face.

Before, you used to welcome an embrace;
you’d chuckle at our family’s silly quips.
We failed to see this as a state of grace.

Time travels on at a relentless pace
but time is not linear: it soars and dips.
You’ll look at me once and see a loved face.
Recognition itself is a kind of grace.

from Rattle #49, Fall 2015
Tribute to Scientists

__________

Ilana Kelsey: “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love words, so I’m often surprised to find myself pursuing a PhD in biology. Over time, however, I’ve come to appreciate how true it is that everything can be poetry, even test tubes and cell culture. These poems are a collection of reflections, often composed while doing something monotonous at the bench, that attempt to describe universal experiences even as I pursue a highly specialized career.” (web)

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October 14, 2015

Richard Hedderman

MUMMIES

Milwaukee Public Museum

When children ask if it’s frightening
when they come alive, I tell them yes,
of course it is, it’s absolutely terrifying,
and believe me, you don’t want to be around

when it happens, especially at night.
When they ask if the mummies walk
with their arms outstretched like mummies
in the movies, I tell them no, it’s nothing

like that. You see, I explain, the muscles
of their arms have atrophied from thousands
of years of disuse; they just can’t walk
around the way mummies do in movies.

In fact, I explain, their feet have been so
lovingly and carefully bound by strips
of flax linen, that it’s difficult for them
to walk at all, which explains the halting gait,

the fear that at any moment they will stumble
and pitch forward, landing in a heap of rags.
Can they talk? No, they can’t talk, not after
all those years in tombs choked with the dust

of centuries and the weight of eternity
upon them. Can they see, they want to know.
Not any more, I say, for long ago
their eyes were replaced with onions or stones,

stones as white as the sun. Finally, I explain,
they long only to wander forth as they used to,
and once again admire their reflections
in the shimmering Nile of the gallery floor.

from Rattle #49, Fall 2015
Tribute to Scientists

__________

Richard Hedderman: “I’m not formally trained as a scientist, but have spent two decades working in science and natural history museums, experiences that have inspired a good number of my poems. These places are extraordinarily rich environments for poets. Among my many museum adventures, I’ve created lightning, worked with bobcats and great horned owls and spent plenty of time around Egyptian mummies. Where I am now, at the Milwaukee Public Museum, we’re the only venue in the upper Midwest outside of Chicago exhibiting mummies. So a good deal of the programming I’m involved with focuses on them. My poem, ‘Mummies,’ is based on questions I’ve heard from students visiting the museum.”

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