Radioactive decay is the set of various processes by which unstable atomic nuclei (nuclides) emit subatomic particles.
Decay is said to occur in the parent nucleus and produce a daughter nucleus.
Allegory made easy, our story foreshadowed by science:
another nuclear family, destined for disintegration.
But we want to be special, don’t we? We want
to believe in the mercurial majesty of our own
destruction. Even now, all these miles away,
I take refuge in cool subjunctive caves:
If only I believed more avidly in God…
If only I had kept the Fourth Commandment…
My mother had a plan. She told me to stay at home
till I was thirty, live in her basement, borrow her car.
I could take the bus to school in the University District,
complete my Ph.D. without the desperate quest
for money, without acquiring a single pint of debt.
My father agreed. It only made sense. And then,
by their unanimous decree, I would be married, & a down
payment would be waiting for me on a three-
bedroom brick rambler in their water-view community—
close by, so they could always watch the children.
That birthright was wealth & security, secret sex &
cigarettes stubbed out beneath the wide camellia tree
that obscured my bedroom window all those years.
It was my mother screaming, for reasons unbeknownst
to science, my father pledging his fleeting remedy:
Whatever you want, Darling. Whatever you need.
So we come back again to detritus, the cells
of appeasement & displeasure sloughing off my skin
until I glimpsed the mannequin of their most ample
aspirations, that proxy-woman I could not become.
My father said: “You’re killing your mother.”
My mother said: “Listen to your father.”
But I had a sundial & a strong intuition &
that sinking-ship feeling that shook me clean
to my soles. We were headed for a capsize,
my family & I, evoking words like asunder
& adrift. “Are you trying to be an outcast?”
my mother asked, which only begged the question:
cast out of what? A house of order—built on
stilts, perched in sand? Secret society of
private misgivings & public thanksgivings?
There’s what we say, & what we do,
then there’s what we breathe: whole climate
committed to asphyxiation, slow
incineration of a last honest wish,
final non-bureaucrat’s desire.
I can hold my breath a long time under water,
my swimmer’s lungs primed for intervals
of deep submersion. But I can’t open my eyes.
It’s a problem of underworld survival,
learning the way of touch, calculated kinesthesia
through a wilderness of stray sounds, refracted
lights. Here beneath the surface of things,
where the floating debris cannot reach me,
I still sense earthly tremors, voices booming,
the searchlight probing these depths.
Julie Marie Wade is the author of 15 collections of poetry, prose, and hybrid forms, including the forthcoming projects Meditation 40: The Honesty Room (Pank “Little Books,” 2023) and Fugue: An Aural History (New Michigan Press, 2023). With Denise Duhamel, she wrote The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose (Noctuary Press, 2019) and with Brenda Miller, Telephone: Essays in Two Voices (Cleveland State University Press, 2021). A professor of creative writing at Florida International University, Julie makes her home with Angie Griffin and their two cats in Dania Beach.
"Fallout" first appeared in Green Mountains Review and is published in Skirted: Poems (The Word Works, 2021). The author grants permission.
Julie Marie Wade’s latest book is Skirted: Poems. Visit with her and her work at the Miami Book Fair 2022. Cover art by: The Word Works design team.
Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s preview coverage of Miami Book Fair (MBF) 2021! The poets whose work you’ll be reading every weekday from October 25 through November 12 are just a few of the many authors from around the world participating in this year’s MBF, the nation’s largest gathering of writers and readers of all ages. They all look forward to sharing their work, thoughts, and ideas both in person and online. Between November 14 and November 21, new poet conversations and readings will be launched and available for free on miamibookfaironline.com (in addition to other content). For more information, visit the website and follow MBF on Instagram and Twitter at @miamibookfair and use the hashtag #miamibookfair2021.