With Knowledge of Fire, and: Medea

With Knowledge of Fire

for Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee

We would be spreading out tablecloths, Arranging silverware while our wives chill

Wine for Sunday afternoon dinner. Later when it’s cooler we would work on our

Cars, half our bodies hidden under waxy black Grease, fuel pumps, radiator fluid. Our kids might

Throw smiles under the fenders. We’d catch them, Toss them back like autographed baseballs.

Instead, we check technology: Cabin pressure, oxygen supply, radio contact.

The boys at Cape Canaveral are ready For us to fly. Our command module blinks

With stars. Those colored lights dangle above us Like eyes. Why do we think of Christmas

In Vietnam and then our wives’ pearl necklaces Imitating the moon each night? When the sun

Leaks over the earth’s black edge, a spark pops, Fizzles up from where we lose sight of ourselves

In the dark crawl, sets us beating like doves For the sealed window, the sky, the moon’s

Powdered head. We’ll fly until the stark, dark Walls of the universe crack beneath us.

Medea

You said you’d return to take them from me. Here they are.

I gave them three knife holes apiece: one for each navel Where they were ripped from me and two for their eyes.

I touched their shoulders to make sure they were cooling. I touched their shoulders because I was their mother.

Then I burned their little bodies black for you And laid them out, side by side,

So you could look at them together and say, “My sons.”