​Deborah Bacharach
​

Napalm on the Periodic Table

Everyone wants to quit the pointless Bunsen burners,
their pittance of power,
glass beakers bound to break.
When we wanted to break out, we’d ask
Mr. Jones, second period science, “What did
you do in your helicopter?”

1978 in the suburbs of America, Mr. Jones
back from Vietnam. Remember '78?
The cool kids wore corduroy overalls, double knit
polyester in a smooth interlock stitch,
ruffled yoke, ruffled trim.
In third period U.S. history, we all
learned who had the last cow
on the White House lawn: Taft 1913.
Sixty years ago, or just ten, all quaint,
ancient history. The Tet Offensive.
Those weren't even words to us.

He never taught us the chemistry
of napalm, agent orange,
the biology of men without legs,
He never unbraided the psychology
of loneliness.
​
Suburban Mondays too Mr. Jones deployed
with eyes that ached
from horizons under the blades.
He never screamed.

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Deborah Bacharach is the author of Shake & Tremor (Grayson Books, 2021) and After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015). Her work has recently appeared in Poetry East, Last Syllable, and Grist among many other journals, and she has received a Pushcart prize honorable mention. She is a poetry reader for SWWIM and Whale Road Review.