Pablo Otavalo

The public oils
a letterpress

“I wonder for a moment what animal I am.”

• Laryssa Wirstiuk

It is not unconditional. Silk
takes to dye easy
once vigorously worked.  Milk
boiled and rubbed gently
over leather will clean it
excellently. In a cotton
 
washcloth add a spoon
of salt to dry oatmeal
as an exfoliating scrub. Marie
Curie was months away
from earning her second Nobel
when her letters to Paul
 
Langevin were purloined
by a detective and made public
by his wife Jeanne Desfosses
Langevin. 1911.
 
The mob
that broke out threw stones
 at Marie’s house, through her
windows, unknowingly at her
daughters, huddled inside.
                                                             They called Marie a home wrecker.
 
            In a poorly ventilated dissecting room
            with a leaky roof, rather a shed next to the École Normale’s School
            of Physics, Marie investigated the conductivity of air
           
            around samples of uranium,  published
            first on thorium’s radioactivity and out of pitchblende
            extracted polonium and radium. 1897.
 
She shared ¼ of the Nobel in Physics
in 1903, but the 1911 Nobel in Chemistry
was all hers for her isolation
 
 of radium in its pure metallic state
and her research into its decay
demonstrating the transmutation
of one element to another,
 
                                                   once the dream of alchemists,
                                                   a reality.
 
“Don't let yourself be touched
by a crisis of crying and tears. Think of the saying
about the crocodile who cries because he has not
eaten his prey, the tears of your wife are of this kind."
                                                                                              
                                                                                               - Marie Sklodowska-Curie 1911
 
       For so long she had worn a severe
       black dress after her husband’s death
       but on a warm April night Marie donned
       a white satin gown with a single
       pink rose pinned to her waist. 1910.
                                                                                      After she began to suspect, Jeanne
                                                                                      confronted Marie and ordered her
                                                                                      to leave France immediately or die.
                                                                                                                                                       She refused.
       Her papers, even her cookbooks,
       are deemed too dangerous to handle
       and are kept in lead-lined boxes.
                                                                              “If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then
                                                                              simply don’t read that hogwash, but rather leave it to
                                                                              the reptiles for whom it’s been fabricated.
                                                                                           With most amicable regards to you and Langevin,
                                                                              yours very truly,”
                                                                                                                                   —A. Einstein 1911
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
*Cited: Spend Low, Live High/ Catherine Morsink, Granny & Granddad’s Household Encyclopedia/ John O’Neon, Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie/ Barbara Goldsmith, A Short History of Nearly Everything/ Bill Bryson, NobelPrize.org, http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol8-trans/34



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­­Pablo Otavalo is from Cuenca, Ecuador but now lives and writes in Chicago. He is a recipient of the 2013 & 2014 Illinois Emerging Poet prize and is currently nominated for an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award. His work has recently appeared or been featured by Rhino, Jet Fuel Review, Structo Magazine, Ninth Letter, and Tupelo Press. He is an avid chess player and is currently emotionally vulnerable. He can be found at pablootavalo.com and he is currently still reading Mark Doty's Atlantis.  ­­