Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey – Two Poems

radiation

my roommate drinks white wine

                                                       from a uranium glass,

tells us the radiation settles

                                                       in his bones.

under the back porch, a patchwork

                                                       cat looks for a safe place

to give birth. the space rasps open

                                                       between a basement door

and its frame, a wedge

                                                       driven into the airless dark.

but then—the rain while the sun

                                                       is still blurring in hot,

white. in this light, I feel

                                                       resuscitation under my skin—

spine uncurling like a fern,

                                                       arteries a river after snowmelt.

all uranium glasses, my roommate

                                                       tells me, were made before

American uranium was confiscated

                                                       for the Manhattan Project.

you find them now, still,

                                                       in thrift stores and antique shops—

artifacts, scarification, the shards

                                                       still embedded in the flesh.

the glass itself is harmless,

                                                       less radioactive, says my roommate,

than a human body. but still,

                                                       he is drinking from the green blossom

and telling us with delight of the few

                                                       lucky particles now lodging

in the mineral of his skeleton,

                                                       the very foundation of him.

and I think—and I am in the sinking

                                                       evening sunlight now,

with the early spring leaves

                                                       bubbling sweet yellow—

that there is something to be said

                                                       for toasting the ways in which

the world leaves its mark on the body.

                                                       there is something to be said for raising

a poisonous glass to the light,

                                                       casting your eyes across the kitchen

for the place where its reflection settles.