Size / / /

For Louis Slotin

About suffering they were never wrong, the old comics:

Dr. Manhattan's accident a perfect recreation of Slotin's,

poisoned before his frightened co-worker's eyes.

Here's the drawing of him holding his screwdriver, tickling

the dragon. Oppenheimer would complain about his pangs

of conscience, the images of his friend haunting him.

They could imagine what he described: the sour taste

in his mouth, the pain in his hand, and they could still see

that blue glow around him, feel the heat wave

from beryllium meeting plutonium core. His retching,

then nine days of futile blood transfusions.

"A bomb putter-togetherer," he called himself,

though the bomb would take him apart atom by atom.

After this, they began to use robots; they wanted to find a way

to keep a man's hands from touching the demon core of this dragon.




Jeannine Hall Gailey (jeannine.gailey@live.com) is the Seattle-area author of Becoming the Villainess (Steel Toe Books, 2006) and She Returns to the Floating World (Kitsune Books, 2011). Her work has been featured on NPR's The Writer's Almanac, Verse Daily, and in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Her website is www.webbish6.com, and you can see some of her previous work in our archives.
Current Issue
21 Apr 2025

tomorrow when i have hardened, and your body has renewed.
A recent wave of research into the quantum properties of emotion suggests that love may be more than a fleeting human experience
Every spring, the new year came down from the mountains to eat the old one.
Friday: This Cursed House by Del Sandeen 
Issue 14 Apr 2025
Strange Horizons
Strange Horizons
Issue 7 Apr 2025
By: Lowry Poletti
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 31 Mar 2025
Issue 24 Mar 2025
Issue 17 Mar 2025
Issue 10 Mar 2025
By: Holli Mintzer
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 3 Mar 2025
Issue 24 Feb 2025
Issue 17 Feb 2025
Issue 10 Feb 2025
By: Alexandra Munck
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
Load More