Radioactive Zombie Marie Curie
by Rachel Bennett
You slept, shining out your bones
from Radioactive Zombie Marie Curie, a text-based game by M. Alexander
The first thing you see is a woman, head
in hand, surrounded by the idea
of all the men she’s left like countries,
their constitutions irrelevant and
desk drawers overflowing with saltpeter
and musk. Dear receding empire,
in its tooled sheath a souvenir
from the quest. Meanwhile she solves
the problem everyone said was unsolvable,
the way sand moves through the sea.
she thinks, it was a mistake to be
from anywhere. The danger here
is great—her unspoken
eyes and childless machines—you
will need all the bars you’ve acquired
to defeat her. This is where
the organism stops, you think,
but she’s already thought it. Ditto
shadows growing like teeth
in sunlit mouths. This is before
her city abdicates its promise
of homecoming like a dying
body, but don’t think chronology
tempers her resolve. You are a room
in the house she walks through
to be somewhere else. She’s programmed
to be undefeatable. If it seems unfair,
forget the program and go
about domesticity. Your windowsill
heaped with lamb’s quarter
and lovage, your bloodlust
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