Émilie du Châtelet

A great man whose only fault was being a woman.

 – Voltaire

 

unus

 

Three men keep
a flicker of inclining light
on a woman forming

 

and reforming Newton
in French, who ignores
her clenching womb

 

until a daughter
is born and placed
on a geometry book

 

while she piles papers
before being put to bed
by three men,

 

lovers, who keep the light.

 

duo

 

She wrote:
We are not trained
to think. Fire

 

is not a material
substance. Reason
and maths will unlock

 

the universe. I am
a being with a mind,
enlightening men.

 

tres

 

Émilie knows
how to flirt, how to keep
the flicker lit

 

in a man—many
men flicker and incline
beneath her smile—,

 

how to fence
with a naked
blade, how to divide

 

a nine-figure number
by nine other figures
in her head,

 

how to enter
the bastion of science
—dressing openly

 

as a man—, how to make
money by counting
cards, how to die

 

post-partum.