“Mother’s Milk” by Kendall Evans and Robert Borski

Turns out, perchlorate, a component of rocket
fuel, is now being found increasingly often
in mother’s milk, but even before this toxic
additive, milk’s ability not only to nourish, but
propel skyward, has long been evident.

In fact, served warm and from a ridiculously-
convenient carton, this most unique of fluids
has more than helped us to forestall confinement
to a single world, striking scaled bonds of cold-
bloodedness, fueling dreams—sleep being a major
side effect of warm milk—and amplifying intelligence,
all of which have been vital to boosting our initial
climb out of the evolutionary gravity well. Hard,
in other words, to see lactation as anything other
than Darwinian accelerant.

Consequently, uplifted in a long flaring ascent
(just as an infant reaches for its mother’s
breast) is Homo lacteus, the newest of arrivistes,
but one that will soon enough find itself rocketing
along a flight path (Sputnik, Apollo, Voyager)
to ever bolder heights, challenges, and conquests—
perhaps in time even into the proximal heart
of globular cluster M13 itself.

No big surprise, really—galaxy, after all,
being weaned from the Greek word for milk.

Kendall Evans‘ stories and poems have appeared in nearly all the major science fiction and fantasy magazines, including Asimov’s SF, Analog, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Weirdbook, Mythic Delirium, Dreams & Nightmares, Space & Time, Nebula Award Showcase (2012), and many others. He is the author of the novel The Rings of Ganymede and a number of chapbooks, including Poetry Red-Shifted in the Eyes of a Dragon; Separate Destinations and The Tin Men (both written in collaboration with David C. Kopaska-Merkel); I Feel So Schizophrenic, the Starship’s AftBrain Said; and In Deepspace Shadows. Robert Borski is a retired state employee and lives in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. Though he did not start writing poetry until well into his sixth decade, he has had nearly four hundred of his poems published and in such venues as Asimov’s, Dreams and Nightmares, Star*Line, and Strange Horizons. Two collections of his poetry remain available: Blood Wallah and Carpe Noctem.