laika poem
Booker W.
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I’ve been fascinated by vintage science fiction and the extent of human empathy since sometime before my first introduction to Star Trek two years ago. Thusly, I sobbed for two days over Laika the Russian cosmonaut after reading her story in depth for the first time. In 1957, Kudryavka (Little Curly), a two- or three-year-old stray dog from the streets of Moscow renamed later to Laika, was trained and shot into space with the plan to painlessly poison her before descent after ten days. She died roughly four hours after launch from overheating. It’s one of the saddest stories in scientific history to me, and I wrote this poem for closure, to reconcile the scientists’ real love for their space dogs and the cruelty of consciously inhumane animal testing. It’s from Laika’s perspective, innocent but with a tragic and ironic worldly kindness to it.
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Creativity to me is a person’s unique approach to a problem. Broken communal school bench? Rebuild it! Word not getting out about systemic injustice? Write about it yourself! Not enough sci-fi songs? Make them! Creativity is the ability to make connections between concepts to create a new solution.
