by Sandra Beasley
Landing at the Sea of Tranquility,
the clock calls for breakfast—
eight squares of bacon, coated in gelatin;
dehydrated peaches; apricot cereal cubes.
No salt on the loose, no spice,
fifteen cups of coffee per astronaut.
All this fine-tuned in the eight years
since Gemini pilot Joe Young’s pocket
revealed a corned beef sandwich
courtesy Wolfie’s of Cocoa Beach,
which he offered to Gus Grissom
as the crumbs broke away and floated
toward the fickle innards of the ship.
Now, everything bound into bar or pouch,
cocktail shrimp hand-selected to squeeze
one by one through the tubing.
Inventing the space taco will take
another two decades. Sturdy tortillas
will be fortified for shelf life,
glued together by creamed onions.
In 2008, Korean scientists will perfect
how to prepare kimchi
without the lactic bacterial fizz
that might, given cosmic rays,
just happen to mutate.
But we are not there yet,
and for days the Apollo 11 menu
has asked them to imagine one paste
as beef, another as chicken;
to discern first tuna, then salmon.
As they ready to step outside
the lunar module, Buzz Aldrin unscrews
a tiny vial drawn from his private pouch,
and the wine drapes at one-sixth gravity.
His fingertips grip a tiny chalice,
while the other hand places
a wafer on his tongue. During all this,
NASA cuts the feed. Soon they’ll return
to regularly scheduled acts of faith,
releasing hydrogen and oxygen
to mix inside the fuel cell:
from that, a gathering of water,
and from that, a chowder of corn.
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