Honors Biology
by Sandra Yannone
1
We were never dissecting the dead frog bathed in flies
Before our feet, its sun-baked limbs splayed like lies
Drying on the sidewalk’s tongue. Sometimes her eyes
Glared like this, so to stop her straining
Her amphibious nerves, I tried training
Myself to overlook them like forecasted rain.
We were all aquatic once, so I forgave her occasional slink
Beneath the surface, uncoupling the links
We’d found to identify ourselves. Once after dripping ink
Onto glass slides to highlight the disasters
I made of my specimens, my lab partner and I observed asters
Shining in the cytoplasm before the cells stirred
Into identical twins. Daughter cells, the film strip
Called them that day Mr. Helska tripped
Over the cord while advancing the frames, ripping
His nerves long before anyone argued over homosexuality
In school. Still no one scored well on the sexuality
Unit we read. I stayed up drinking weak tea
All night with my partner before the test; I refused to cut open
The frog the next week. Mr. Helska tapped his pen
Against my desk in disgust. Later in Algebra I couldn’t solve for “n.”
2
But it wasn’t a dead frog
Drying this morning
On the sidewalk. On the return
Walk home, the dead
Frog spread into a green leaf,
Just fallen, face down,
Its backside, the same
Creamy green as the dead frog
I didn’t see. And the frog
In Honors Biology was a pig,
And I was the one who dug
The blade in one ragged line
The length of the pink rubber
Eraser which was the pig, although
I hesitated. And although I didn’t
Understand, my crush was on the girl
At the next station, not my partner
Who never studied with me
That night. And love never arrived
In the form of a woman pushing me
To the ground. And this morning
It rained, so I caught the bus.
3
She is always just perched on the corner whenever I ask
My just-polished shoes to risk the sidewalk’s cracks,
To turn away from the arrows slicing toward their marks
As I pass the sooty windows of the Prairie
Bowmen Archery Club at the intersection of 14th and M
And hear the arrow’s plunge into the simulated paper
Breast of a deer – the thud my body made the day
I dropped to the ground, hoping to hear the future
Moving toward us like a weak pulse travels
The rails before the train’s scheduled
Arrival. In the alley a dead bird intent
On the ground doesn’t look dead, but is, unlike
The night she and I left the theater to find something thrashing
Against the curb: a bird, one eye staring into the asphalt
Mistaken for the night. The bird kept knocking
Its impaired wings toward the sky. We stood above
The bird, circling its erratic motion
Like a ballroom dance, afraid
To cut in, neither of us wanting to touch
The bird, its dusty, scratched wings. But the claw
Was the problem, I told her, snapped
Like a twig. Months before, she pressed
The back of her head against the dart board
On my living room door. The possible scores haloed
Her head like a dare so I kissed her. We stared at each other
For a long time. If only the bird would fly,
We thought, we won’t have to know where it lands
And dies. Packed in my jacket, the bird was not
A heart cut perfectly out of the body,
But simply a bird, pusling in my hands, dying.