Something normal happens in outer space
“Beer is a no-fly, because without gravity, carbonation bubbles don’t rise to the surface” – Mary Roach, Packing for Mars
Because you have to have something to eat up there
and the cubed food and the tubed food and the liquid formula
are not delicious, moreover have nasty consequences on the way out,
I respect the guy who brought along a corned-beef sandwich from Wolfie’s
John Young, back in 1965, despite the problem of crumbs
which wouldn’t fall on the floor but float about and possibly mess up
a control panel. Still there’s a craving for something normal,
familiar, while you’re thousands of miles away from a decent lager
protected from a hostile environment only by human technology.
That’s why you can trade an onion for practically anything
on Mir; that’s why you might save an orange for weeks
just to look at this miraculous globe that came from your own miraculous globe.
Which
Turns out exploring the memory palace
most of the doors are closed, the signs
misspelled or written in runes, I’m not sure
if the power comes from keeping them closed
or opening them. Some nights I turn a handle,
open to a room lit by the moon. I spook myself […]
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Walking on the Franz Josef Glacier, South Island, NZ
In a room made entirely of ice / Oscar Wisting sits at his sewing machine / stitching tent after tent, // dreaming of whortleberry jam / * / every explorer returns to his diary, / inscribing entry after entry – Bill Manhire
Everywhere to walk is ice; it crunches
or cracks, sings or slides. I cut steps with a pickaxe
but that takes strength and time and
the group ahead is moving fast. I shuffle forward,
not entirely upright, weight front,
almost a dance step, so the hobnails
catch the ice. If I lean back I slide.
Some crevasses I can step across; the wider
ones I jump, swing my body forward or
use the pickaxe, hitting it into the other side
until it snags deep enough to let me pull myself.
Someone behind me pushes helpfully. Someone in front
holds out an arm to grab, but no matter what beacon
my eyes and mind attach themselves to, no matter
what my feet have planned ahead, I slip […]
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Janet Bowdan’s poems have appeared in APR, Best American Poetry, Frakture, The Rewilding Anthologyand elsewhere. Her chapbook, Making Progress, came out from Finishing Line Press in 2018. She teaches at Western New England University and lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with her husband, their son, a cat and a chinchilla.