Radium Girls
I. December 1923: Waterbury Clock Factory, Connecticut
my mouth is a room that lights up in the dark
the girl who trained me spatula-full of radium in her mouth the corners gritty
and glowing her reassurance that the paint is harmless taught us how to point the paintbrush tip between our lips
my manager says a little radon puts the sex in your cheeks nudging my ass
some girls hate the taste but i love it it tastes like eternity
no matter how many times i brush my teeth at night i feel that gritty glue
i’m good and quick i get more dials done than the other girls
sometimes i only get thirty dials done a day what will my mother say when she sees my paycheck
my mouth’s been aching my mother blames my sweet tooth
last night a tooth came out i didn’t have to do anything it just fell into my hand
other people buy radium soda radium candy radium facial creams but we get it for free
we’re the luckiest girls in the world
in the dark we are suns our faces hands glow like the dials we paint
one girl’s halfway to becoming an angel her back all the way down to her waist
glowing
soon we won’t have to put it on at all it’ll be in our bones it’ll pour out
from our forever-twenty skin
II. August 2011: Miyakoji, Japan
when we visit our house we wear cough masks we wear suits
at our house the grass is tall and uncut everything is still on the floor where it fell when the earthquake hit
the body of a dog is tangled in our fence it hasn’t fully decomposed a patch of fur like a felt block remaining on his right ear
first thing: my father disposes of the dog my mother gets on her knees and begins scrubbing the floor in her gloves and suit she adjusts the family altar and burns a stick of incense
every time we go outside my father brings a meter on good days we can play on the blacktop for thirty minutes
my mother asks me if I feel alright if anything feels odd i think about stuffing my mouth with our flowers eating the expired candy in our kitchen and becoming my own power plant
on the edge of town a cleanup crew fills bags with radioactive waste there are lots of bags they fill up my old school’s baseball field the bags get high enough to build a black wall
They say They’ll get rid of the bags soon but my mother doesn’t believe Them she says They are burying us inside our own waste because no one wants to look at us and feel guilty no one wants to remember what went wrong or change anything everyone wants to go back to work back to their homes and return to what they’ve always done
my mother’s voice gets loud when she says this she’s holding a watch her mother gave her when she was a girl like me she drops it and it falls to the floor the glass face cracks with one split sound even so it continues ticking my mother goes silent i am silent—it makes every tick seem louder than it really is
About the Author Meg Eden's work has been published in various magazines, including Rattle, Drunken Boat, Poet Lore, and Gargoyle. She teaches at the University of Maryland. She has four poetry chapbooks, and her novel "Post-High School Reality Quest" is forthcoming from California Coldblood, an imprint of Rare Bird Lit. Check out her work at: www.megedenbooks.com
This poem was first published in HR 84. It was the winner of the Ian MacMillan Awards.
About the Artist Mohammed Ali Mirzaei was born in Iran, Tehran (1982). His BA is in the field of News Photography at the University of Culture & Art Isfahan. His works have been in various festivals in Iran, including: First Place in "National Festival of Iranian people," Fourth Place in the "Women and urban life" festival, Winner of Best Collection in the “Festival of Film & Photo Young Cinema,” and chosen for the Fereshteh Prize (Tehran 2015). His photos have also been published in Midway Journal, Oxford Magazine, The Missing Slate, and Silk Road Review.