CarolAnn sends this one:

LAIKA, by Joel Brouwer

    "Well if he wishes it, I will, but I can no
    longer answer for anything," she thought, and
    rushed forward at full tilt… She now
    scented nothing more, but only saw and heard
    without understanding anything.    
    -- Laska, Levin's dog, in Anna Karenina

    Ignition shudders down her bones, the slow, thick hand
    of thrust begins to press her head
    into her neck, and the capsule goes black

    with roar, her stomach hitching up at each abrupt
    drop as the rocket's stages burn out, fall
    back. Pressure forces vomit through her snout, her ears

    are packed with clamor, and then the sound snaps
    off like a bent branch cracking
    at last. She rises from her harness and breathes.

    The presses at Pravda clack all night. Khrushchev dances
    giggling drunk in his nightshirt and Ike
    stays home from church. Reporters jostle shoulder

    to shoulder in Oppenheimer's office, scribbling notes,
    children in Nebraska are drilled to dive
    under desks if the sky flashes white, every wall

    in the Pentagon is plastered with charts and maps
    and Californians rush to backyards with binoculars
    as all America scrambles to translate

    Laika's simple message: a steady beep: her heartbeat.
    To her alone, afloat in the no-world of the capsule, it means
    only what it means: blood's thick course. She suckles

    protein from a tube in her chest. She paddles
    at the nothing. She does not imagine rabbits. If
    she thinks, she thinks, How lucky to be done

    with all that noise. Now the gauge on the air tank
    wavers into red. The cold inside strains to join
    the cold outside. Her mind drifts into snow.