50th Anniversary of the Moon Landings
I. Day
I scan London for some sign,
but no one seems to remember
so I’m watching Google Doodle
to get a real sense of the undiscovered
lands. Men can go to the moon but I
I cannot even be bothered to go to south of the river or Dalston to watch the commemoration film I’ll I’ll see it tomorrow I promise myself.
I looked earlier in the morning for moon
moon jewellery, scavenged through my necklaces but found nothing. Stars,
stars, I think later in the day,
I could have worn star jewellery.
Google Doodles. The banality.
This is not what I expected, which I
I might as well admit happened to be global peace the world united in Western commemoration. Girls in silver go-go boots, young men painted chrome, a U.N. Declaration to call it Moon Day.
Everything stops just like the footage
video I duckduckwent all the
all the way to YouTube.
Only three London cinemas
movie theaters theatres cinemas theaters theatres screening the big day.
Maybe the programmers forgot the
the momentous occasion but
but most likely it’s generation y z born after
but x still remembers the child blips of
of space boots tang. Or maybe not.
I am American. I am an extraterrestrial here.
Different history but
but my fate has converged here in London like like my mother’s egg and
and my father’s sperm against the odds.
Everyone in the world gets along in love and beauty. Beauty. I’d like to teach the world to sing.
Sing. We have sailed to the stars. We have touched up Luna.
Instead everyone taps their smartphone in deep thought I I console myself to say maybe they’re watching the the landings too or at least the Google Doodle. I was seven months old but we
we were in the Arctic with no TV or
or even radio so my mother told me
several years ago when she elaborated that
she never could in fact have held me up
to see the screen as I had always assumed.
My mom too only saw it properly for the
the first time this year at the age of 75.
Instead we have a slither in the
the White House bleating soundbytes on Mars a
a desecration no communion tongue to cheek
frenching the white tongue of the cool moon,
our opal rising blue and gold green glittering
like a Turk’s eye in the old form of
of turquoise adjective admixture earthrise protect us
us against the evil eye we are one people,
we are one, we are al one.
Like Knut at tides we stare at our phones at
at inevitable earthset cut off from it it all but
no we I one in the queue for the 249 bus one
one woman at last is wearing a shirt
with ostentatious stars on it that’s
got to be it has to be a tribute I think but
but I say nothing nothing to her.
II. Night (when it is eerie to consider the scope of our passions a half year before the pandemic)
I will try not to let it go to my head.
But Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins
just liked one of my space paintings on
Instagram today of all days.
I was just thinking that if someone ever
ever offered me a free trip to
the international space station I
I would turn it down I think. Chicken a
squawking earthbound chicken a flightless bird.
Would you? I text my friends
whilst humblebragging about social media valentines.
I’d really have to think about it,
friend one says. I couldn’t live easily myself
if I turned down the chance, friend two says.
I would go too, I say, because I’ve now changed my mind.
Ha ha, no one’s asked, says friend two.
My new friend MC is begging me to
come with on his next launch, I text,
claims he got a little bored with just Armstrong and Aldrin.
I was going to go to bed, but I got so overexcited over the
Michael Collins contact I poured myself a glass of champagne and and went out looking for the moon.
However, I also dropped the Ikea glass and
and then cut my hand whilst being a responsible citizen. I
I give a hoot and don’t pollute. I was
was walking down a road next to mine home champagne
Widow Click actually and
and bleeding from my hand. I text this. Life in second person.
Perfect, says friend two, that’s peak life.
A guy tried to pick me up and I said
I was looking for the moon, I elaborate.
Then he saw my bleeding hand and desisted.
“I dig crazy chicks,” says friend two.
“Crazy chicks are easy…
Oh wait, her hand’s bleeding… Nah.”
I am texting with one hand. Time for a bandaid.
Goodnight. Goodnight, Moon.
London on the Moon
Moon on a Stick is a good name for a pub
or a retrofuturist dessert or a prog-rock album.
I wonder how often it has occurred to you that
all space medical doctors are essentially veterinarians
due to their expertise in multiple species
A.L.F., Vulcans, E.T., greys their
cats, hamsters, bluebirds, dinosaurs.
It has occurred to me.
And now you have looked askance
on my latest commission,
on the anatomically incorrect Crystal Palace dinosaurs
I was bribed to paint for £200
alongside watercolour Routemaster omnibuses.
I have defied you and painted this anyway.
Despite my benign pareidolia that has me detect
fizzing physiognomies in nearly everything
with increasing regularity these days
including the predictable jolly man
like a 1970s smiley decal plastered on my planet’s rocky satellite. Yes, I know you can’t see the curve of the moon when you’re on it; yes, I know you cannot see stars save the sun from the moon; yes, I know there are no Crystal Palace dinosaurs or red buses on the moon.
Kathleen Bryson is an Alaskan-born evolutionary anthropologist and an EU virtual reality research fellow, with previous posts at Oxford and QMUL. She has had four novels previously published; 25+ short stories in publications ranging from Aesthetica to Bending Genres; and 45+ poems in venues from Magma, Star*Line, Always Crashing to Ranger.