1. DNA : Living Organism ::

a. Birds : horizon
b. Instructions : IKEA bookshelf
c. Sentences : novel

2. Nucleobases: Instructions ::

a. Letters : words
b. Pink pastry box : Bavarian crème doughnuts
c. A mother's voice : "It will be okay. I promise."          

3. ATCG : DNA ::

a. La-la-la : song
b. ABCs : Latin Alphabet
c. Yellow : doubt

4. Ribosome : mRNA ::

a. Pressure : glacial ice
b. Summer sky : notebook paper
c. Reader : recipe

5. Proteins : Body ::

a. Bricks, wood, cement, and nails : house
b. Water : hydrogen and oxygen
c. Dissatisfaction : a belief in satisfaction

6. DNA: RNA ::

a. Dog bark : night
b. Constitution : working law
c. Hydrogen : oxygen

7. Metaphor : Truth ::

a. Tongues : lies
b. Antelopes : horns
c. Comparisons : Understanding

8. DNA : Story ::

a. Fossils : story
b. Cave art : story
c. Bodies : story
d. All the above

 

 

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Answer key: 1. B.; 2. A. The arrangement of the letters or bases, not the bases or letters themselves, is what makes them significant and become something else; 3. B. ATCG are the bases (or building blocks) to DNA. They stand for adenine (A), cytosine (C), thymine (T), and guanine (G); 4. C. The job of the ribosome is to read the mRNA and assemble it into a protein; 5. A. Proteins act as the basic building blocks to the body; 6. B. DNA serves more like a record, but RNA represents a living representation of the record; 7. C. 8. D.

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This poem is part of her series on non-verbal ways we preserve the past—such as through DNA.