Ba (Barium)

Vile draught
descends
to the viscera,
through its dark
corridors,
a dense
and viscous
flow,
the journey
charted
by Röntgen’s
invisible rays,
which he
discovered
on a plate
of the very
element
and thought
himself mad
because he saw
the bones
of his own hand,
locked himself
in his laboratory
and repeated
the experiment
again and again
until he knew
it must be true,
but unaware
that he had projected
his own demise.

Robert René Galván, born in San Antonio of Indigenous/Mexican heritage, resides in New York City where he works as a professional musician and poet. His collections of poems are Meteors, published by Lux Nova Press and Undesirable: Race and Remembrance, Somos en Escrito Foundation Press, Standing Stones, Finishing Line Press and The Shadow of Time, Adelaide Books. His poetry has been featured in such publications as The Acentos Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Azahares Literary Magazine, Gyroscope, Hawaii Review, Hispanic Culture Review, Latino Book Review, Newtown Review, Panoply, Prachya Review, Sequestrum, Shoreline of Infinity, Somos en Escrito, Stillwater Review, West Texas Literary Review, and UU World. He is a Shortlist Winner Nominee in the 2018 Adelaide Literary Award for Best Poem. Recently, his poems are featured in Puro ChicanX Writers of the 21st Century (2nd Edition) and in Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought. His poems have been nominated for Best of Web and the Pushcart Prize. His poem, Awakening, was featured in the author’s voice on NPR as part of National Poetry Month in the Spring of 2021.