The Periodic Table
Going through abbreviations on the periodic table, with poems by Jim Nawrocki, Kay Cash-Smith, and Susan Haroutunian Cunningham.
TRANSCRIPT
Remember that chart in our high school science classrooms that listed all of the chemical elements, but they weren’t organized alphabetically or in any other way that initially made sense? Various 19th Century scientists had been working on a way to think about how the various elements fit together and interacted. German chemist Johann Dobereiner and Swedish chemist J.J. Berzelius organized elements with similar properties into groups of three. Then English chemist John Newlands organized the then-known 56 elements into 11 groups. But the person given the most credit for organizing all those elements into a way that made sense to chemists—if not to lots of high school chemistry students—was the Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleyev. A Kentucky chemistry teacher created National Periodic Table Day Feb. 7, 2016, the anniversary of Mendeleyev’s birth, to recognize the work of the people who’d come up with it. As we listen to this episode of “Burning Bright,” let’s remember our own science teachers.
You may not believe this, but despite my best efforts, I couldn’t find any pieces written by Passager authors about the periodic table. But I DID find some pieces written by Passager authors whose names begin with the abbreviations for some of the chemical elements. So that’s what we’ll go with.
It seems like sodium should be abbreviated “S” or “So” but it’s not; it’s abbreviated “Na” for “natrium,” the Latin name for sodium. Jim Nawrocki’s name starts with “Na,” so in honor of sodium, Jim Nawrocki’s poem “Blue.”
I stood through the heat of the 11-7 shift
to sear hamburgers, drop French fries
into frothing vats, transform box
after box of the frozen into the fried,
each breakfast, lunch, and dinner a crowd
that flared and fed and left its refuse,
and the hours were blue.
I walked humid highways, rural routes,
hacking weeds and scraping steaming tar
and gravel into holes, sat on guardrails
to eat my lunch by the eternal gust of traffic,
walked in dewy mornings to the district garage
then back as the sun lowered its orange coin,
and the hours were blue.
I cleaned hospital halls among the chronic,
cleared away cast-off bandages with
their signatures of dried-brown blood,
polished an infinity of hallways,
stepped through the whispers of patients who
called to me out of loneliness or fear,
and the hours were blue.
I drove in lunatic circles, up to the 1-75 split
by the squatting factories, black blocks,
just before I turned west, arcing south and back,
a loop of strip mall and multiplex acreage, and then
the ache of familiar streets where no one walked,
all those desperate seasons in a city I did not want,
and the hours were blue.
Jim Nawrocki’s poem “Blue” from Passager Issue 63. Jim’s from California, and California starts with “Ca,” the abbreviation for calcium that’s coincidentally just down and over one from Sodium on the periodic table.
Potassium’s abbreviation should be “P,” but “P” is the symbol for phosphorous, so they had to come up with another abbreviation for Potassium, so, of course, they came up with “K.” “K”? Potassium? Oh wait, the LATIN word for potassium is Kalium! “K”!
From Passager’s 2009 Poetry Contest issue, here’s Kay Cash-Smith’s poem “The Sacrifice.”
I sit for family dinner, staring into
a blue and white china plate.
There, three delicate figures
cross a bridge, carrying lanterns,
surrounded by beauty.
I long to be there with them,
to escape this sadistic ritual called dinner.
So I call out to them with my heart,
Please, please
take me with you!
But the only sound I hear
is that of my father
carving the blackened roast
as though it were my own thin body.
And I know that soon it is I who
will be eaten for dinner.
Each night as I turn to dust,
eyes and mouth filled with ash,
I call out to the distant moon,
beseeching her to light the way
to that bridge of beauty where
I can speak my own true name out loud.
“The Sacrifice,” Kay Cash-Smith.
Just as Potassium’s abbreviation “K” comes from the Latin, so does copper’s. Copper’s abbreviation should be “Co,” but no, “Co” is the abbreviation for Cobalt. So, hmm, let’s check the Latin for copper… Cuprum! “Cu.” Here’s the poem “Musical Chairs and a Wide Swing” by a poet whose last name begins with “Cu”– Susan Haroutunian Cunningham.
It was the – ian at the end
that grabbed me.
I had to re-read her last name,
make sure she was Armenian.
I jumped up, couldn’t
read her writing just then.
I paced across my study,
back and forth, back and forth.
Just to know she’s published
saves me like a place holder.
She has a seat at a favored table.
Terrific. I wonder though:
How wide the space?
Is there enough room for me?
Scarcity and panic tangle
with solace and abundance
over the last seat in a game
of musical chairs.
Ironic. How I compete
with other Armenians.
Poetic epigenetics.
As if there are
still not enough chairs
for a survivor like me.
Grandma and Grandpa moved:
New York to California,
San Francisco to Fresno,
then to the house
on East Montecito
with the huge swing.
When we’d visit them,
I’d purposefully amble out
to the backyard,
find my way
to that weathered
wooden swing,
flop down on the wide board.
Then I’d lean in
and began to pump
and pump my legs
back and forth, back and forth
astonished at how high
I could rise.
Susan Haroutunian Cunningham’s “Musical Chairs and a Wide Swing” from Passager’s 2023 Poetry Contest issue.
I suggested at the beginning of this episode that we remember our science teachers. Considering where we’ve just been, let’s remember our Latin teachers, as well.
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For Christine, Rosanne, Mary, Asher, and the rest of the Passager staff, I’m Jon Shorr.
Due to the limitations of online publishing, poems may not appear in their original formatting.
