Me and Judith Resnik

By Ann Curran

Me and Judith Resnik

fulfill one of her two PRs a month
before she leaves Earth as an astronaut.
She has promise written all over her.
Perfect SAT score, valedictorian.
She switches from math to engineering
because she wants to make real things happen.
She’s the second U.S. woman in space
and the first American Jew. It’s not
important who’s first. It is important
that we each get an opportunity.

She circles the globe ninety-six times.
Up in Florida, down in California.
She activates a solar wing used today
to light and operate the space station.
She shimmies the launch of three satellites
for communications. Maybe the one
that sends GPS directions to you.
It was great, and I’m ready to go back,
she exclaims after a perfect landing.

And back she goes in 1986,
with six doomed others on Challenger.
It breaks apart in about a minute
and rains shock and sorrow around the world.
She earns a Space Medal of Honor.
Schools name a dorm and a lab after her.
Someone calls a crater on the far side
of the moon Resnik. She looked like a bride,
all innocence, posed in her white space suit.
In weightlessness, she laughed as her dark curls
rose above her. She was just thirty-six.

From the book, Me First by Ann Curran, Lummox Press, 2013.

(Posted 2017 August 12)