The Scientific Method

The taxi passes the wall that won’t let anyone see
the cemetery hiding behind it.

Fine, I think. The radium sun is blazing.
A bird takes a bite and spits it back out, pfft.

While I’m fond of the optic nerve, I find
I don’t need it now. The well-lit forever lens

is admitting everything today—today will marry
my white dress; today will marry

my black jacket. Today will marry my dunce heart
that got damaged when a doctor tried

to animate the past I kept in a cage. It’s in there
still with a dreadful procession of people

and the end of everything, everything, everything.






*Untitled photograph of Maria Skłodowska-Curie, photographer unknown, 1903

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Mary Jo Bang is a translator of Dante’s Divine Comedy and author of nine books of poems, including A Film in Which I Play Everyone, which was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and a PEN Voelcker Award, and Elegy, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award. She teaches at Washington University in St. Louis. The Museum of Mary is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2027.