She doesn't mind talking about hers
the slow kind bruises and swellings
an epidemic of tumors more photos
nubile girls in cloche hats
wall-eyed boas grinning at the camera
Radium dial factory girls deft of hand
each proud to be a woman earning a man's paycheck
painting numbers that glow in the dark
on our bedroom clocks a the time clock ticks
their tractable faces white and luminous
as calla lilies bending bobbed heads
over their handiwork licking the pearly tips
to stub their brushes to a fine point
In this new element distilled from deep underground
in the moist rich earth promising miracle cures
and healing waters each one unaware
she offers a share of her body a note to come due
in five years or ten down the line
In the X-ray room she crouches on an iron table
in the government study the Army needs to see
her shining ribs her spine like organ keys
More photos boarded-up factories
steel coffins barely muffle
the radiant ticking below negative numbers
half-lives poisoned an empty clock face
its nights and days burned away
Sixty years later this Midwestern grave
of the last of the red-hot mommas
still too hot to handle
:: Barbara Unger, in If I Had a Hammer: Women's Work in Poetry, Fiction, and Photographs
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