Author: Akanksha Agarwal
Sub-editor: Pamela Piechowicz
Editor: Julia Richards
Photo credit: Timothy Dykes, Blacklight/UV reactive paint, Photograph, January 2020, Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/@timothycdykes.
A poem about the Radium girls.
eyes fall on breath’s beat,
time.
sun-dial shines,
a woman inside.
that radium glow—
silence.
sticky glow
splashed across
nails
teeth
lips
two-fifty watch faces
until
jaws split,
bone rots,
bodies end.
they knew.
syphilis
dignity’s downfall.
fifty lives for a dollar
a man’s death for a verdict
the fire in five
women
insured a wildfire.
i look up
under a lost epitaph,
nights still glow in the dark.
Chariot Journal 