Science-Based
by Lisa Wujnovich
The trouble with 7th grade science was,
Mr. Stevens preferred his own voice
to our messy hands and clumsy mistakes,
or maybe there just weren’t funds
for class experiments
in my farmers’ school, circled
by tomato fields and avocado groves,
and so from his elevated lab desk,
he droned each weight and measure,
salt water solution,
over Bunsen burner and boiling water.
Mr. Stevens believed in alphabetical order,
so in the back by the door, I sat,
experiments telescoped in miniature
behind sweaty heads, lulled by muggy breezes.
Robert, my lab partner and I observed,
his boy arm inches from my girl arm,
both of us concentrating as best we could,
scribbling daily lab reports,
my thin arm tanned a freckled
brown and beige with a hint of pink,
Robert’s more defined forearm hued purple
and blue, not really black at all.
The air between us prickled with whys
and why nots, what ifs and how comes,
becauses and I don’t understands.
Behind Mr. Steven’s back, I rolled my eyes,
snuffled cartoon snores, whispered
hypotheses to touch Robert’s hand,
compare and contrast my monkey bar callous
to his. The rare quiet boy, he let me;
grinned silent, I took as niceness.
Like me, he lived on base, so there he was,
instead of at the other school,
where we would have never met.
Didn’t matter his father ranked higher than mine;
he wrote neater, divided quicker,
shirt always tucked in, hair in place.
Didn’t matter I palmed a free lunch card
and he carried a neatly folded lunch bag.
The lines were clearly draw, unproven, but
conclusive—not science based.
Blurred into submission, little survives
from that class of bouncing fingers
and feet itching to kick ideas against walls.
I like to think I grasped a few concepts—
simple inclined planes, chemical and physical changes,
what alters, and doesn’t, what is not, but can be.
“‘Science-Based’ tries to explore racism, poverty, and classism through my junior high school memories. It took me years into adulthood to recognize the roles civilian and military life have in all three phenomena.” —Lisa Wujnovich
Lisa Wujnovich is a poet and organic vegetable farmer rooted in Hancock, NY, but raised as an Air Force brat. Lisa has two published chapbooks, Fieldwork (2012, Finishing Line Press) and This Place Called Us (2008, Stockport Flats Press). Her poems have appeared in anthologies like Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology (2018, University of Georgia Press) and NOW, the online journal of Hobart, Festival of Women Writers. Her poems can be found recently in Calyx, Banyan River Review, MERVOX, Snapdragon and FEDCO 2022 Seed Catalog. She co-edited the anthology The Lake Rises, by Stockport Flats Press. She has an MFA in poetry from Drew University.