Ivan "Maket" Ivanovich

Poem by Robert Borski

“Leading up to Yuri Gagarin's historic Vostok 1 flight,

the Soviet Union launched two missions with a man-

like mannequin, Ivan Ivanovich, on board.”

                                                       Scientific American 

Lest anyone be confused by my verisimilitude

to a real traveler from space, human or otherwise,

a placard identifying me as “Maket”—the Cyrillic

word for “dummy”—has been placed under my visor.

And yet, far from being offended by this demotion

from sky pilot to idiot unsavant, I have also come

to prefer it to the placeholder name originally

assigned to me at creation. In fact, although Baikanur

and the Kazakh Steppes are thousands of kilometers

from Egypt’s fabled sandbox, at least for myself,

Maket has a pseudo-Nilotic ring to it, as if entombed

within this modern-day launchable sarcophagus, I am

some boy-king about to begin my journey into Eternity.

Perhaps a strange notion for someone never really

heir to the inconstancy of flesh, but other parallels

also attend. How else explain the embalmature

of plastic to preserve my form or the total lack

of inner organs, in the hollow absence of which,

torso-deep, have been inserted over eighty

additional test subjects, actual living beasts

of the field—mice, cavies, snakes. (It appears

I am both canopic jar and vivarium. Also,

like the theriomorphic gods of ancient Kemet,

that I blend animal and other.)

Joining me as well on my two test flights,

like the retinues buried alive with the Pharaohs

for company and servitude in the hereafter, are

Chernuska and Zvezdochka, cosmonaut dogs.

(Both survive.)

As for my final disposition, while coming close

in my desire to reach the green, reed-covered

isles of Aaru, only to be found lacking, an ostrich

feather outweighing my heart, unfortunately

it appears I will be required to return to Duat,

the Underworld—there, like Tutankhamen, to be

put on public display, brought to the National Air

and Space Museum by no Howard Carter

or Lord Carnavon, but billionaire H. Ross Perot,

who secures my remains not by conscripting

me from any legitimate Book of the Dead, but

by a winning bid from Sotheby’s.