Flight Luck, and: Lighting The Dark Side of the Moon

FLIGHT LUCK / Cathryn Hankla Apollo 13, can you hear us, this is Houston, the future home of the Astros, in the fisheye of mission control. We are burning with reflections of your three friends who were fired in the multi-billion dollar kiln—one hell of a spectacle. You see, this is Houston, it was nonmetallic material that time, in a pure environment of oxygen, a tiny spark, but we've fixed that now. Galileo, in 1610, invented a way to the moon; he drew his own conclusions, sketched mare in charcoal that still compares to photographs. Sunspots incised twin images of stars on the retinas of his eyes. The telescopic limbs of light went out for him one night. "Houston," we hear you calling, "We've had a problem." But we thought we had that solved, that's why we were dying to defy the laws of luck, launch you charmed at 1313 hours (someone's idea of a joke) on the eleventh day of the fourth month. In just two days, it would occur to us we might have made our second fatal gaffe in much the same manner as our first. This time, again, it was oxygen. A tank burst. When we sent the Ape, Ham, up, no one watched, we never worried how to coach him down to earth. Apollo crew, if you are orbitting, reroute the poison gas, conserve water, there are no lakes in space, alas; eat light, use your waste for ballast, and perhaps, there's a chance, you will have enough breath to see your flight back to us. Good Luck. 16 · The Missouri Review LIGHTING THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON / Cathryn Hankla "We'll see you on the other side," beamed Lovell before he saw for the first time the far side of the moon. It was Christmas Eve, sixty miles out, and for thirty-four minutes Apollo 8 occulted. The sphere, newsprint adrift in a sea of stars, papier-mâché, or a gray beach mound, felt the scorch of jets. Once it was sound, the ship flawless in orbit, TV sets tuned the blue Earthrise, a mirage of living water on a slide, witnessed from the banks of the moon. Earth's turquoise islands sparked cislunar distance, the astronauts listened to the diamond stylus, to rhythmic seas inside their dreams, as if shells crusted their ears like the curves of space. In that glimpse of the stillborn planet, the astronauts, like Arabian sheikhs, pitched their tent of night; they logged the primeval homesickness, would sleep fitful for a world of color. "In the beginning," began Anders, "God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form. . . ." Lovell said, "Let there be light. . . ." Borman finished, "God saw that it was good." The Missouri Review · 17 ...