Radiant
Clocks with radium-painted hands,
’50s fetish
of all things atomic.
Dim, a hushed nightlight.
You will not wake up much.
Women painted the hands by hand,
brushes slender as pine needles.
They licked the brushes to the needed point.
They say the women’s mouths,
cheeks, palate, tongue,
bloomed cancers,
Orange Fiesta ware, lurid
with uranium, poisoned
the meals and their eaters.
Clock hands gave a dim green glow,
dilute as if underwater.
Radium Hot Springs, BC Canada
boasts healing pools, healing waters,
suffused by radium
decayed from uranium. Half-lives.
We did not stop for lunch,
we did not drink the water.