This poem takes its title from the headline of an article published by Remezcla
on Sept. 21st, 2018.
Haloed by the glow of the multiverse swirling
above La Silla Observatory, your pyrex eye
spotted an orb three times the mass of Jupiter.
All these lenses leering at the heavens,
and yet it was you who identified
HD110014C. You were reluctant to call
it discovery, perhaps because you know
all too well what poisons gush forth
from that word. Or maybe you suspect
you are not the first because you
know there is no such thing
as firsts. Still, you did what no
gringo ever could: you made another world
visible to nosotrxs. Perchance it was HD110014C
that actually recognized you long before your
spectroscopic lens detected her.
It might even be that she had already
decided to entrust you with making
her presence known to our kind.
After all, you proved yourself more
than worthy of such responsibility
when you said your
finding was “not
exceptional,” annihilating
the misguided western patriarchal notion
of greatness too many others have used
to boost themselves since 1492.
You even confessed your introduction
to HD110014C
was entirely an accident,
a courageous admission that eclipses
the bumbling arrogance of every Columbus,
every Cortez, every Pizarro. From 300 million
light years away you glimpsed
another possibility, then befriended
two more exoplanets before
your 28th year around
our lilliputian sun. You,
sprung from a country
crystillized in its mourning
of the disappeared,
met a glorious
dawn and flash
fused to emerge
as one
woman search party.
Maestra Maritza, I know
this goes against all
scientific wisdom, but I can’t help but theorize
that these three interstellar marvels you’ve pulled
into our orbit have become a new home for those
that collapsed into the event horizon
of imperial cruelty. I like to suppose
that our gente were never erased
but rather beamed to a star system
that does not regard them as merely tool
or trinket, a galaxy where their dreams
are as important as those
who dwell in some imaginary
North. Could it be, Maritza,
that what you scoped out there among
the shimmering Allness was in fact
a reunion pachanga thrown on the gold
dust rings of a wandering star where discovery
is not a sword of Damocles but instead a feathered
reentry path for those who have been missing us.
Copyright © 2021 by Vincent Toro. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 19, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.