Curiosity tells us there are blue dunes
on Mars; that there was water, once, before us,
belonging to no one—
as though space exploration were a post-
colonial thought.
There are five U.S. flags left standing
on the moon, five dollars
each, stitched with nylon from Jersey, all of them
bleached into one color, now,
in the nation of nothingness. God says I don’t believe you.
And Dr. Snaut goes on about how we don’t want
other worlds, in the first film
Solaris; we just want
a mirror—which I take to mean we
cut down trees we press into reams on which we write
down our history of cutting
down the trees; or that space rocks crumble
then clump, as does my Godmom Mar-ie
on the mantle, here, in front of me, even if I shake her
& make a stupid wish. The first of us
to occupy the Americas may not have
crossed Beringia Land Bridge, a new report
to believe
for now; just worm routes collapsing
behind us as we move. And I felt important
then, she said, my mother
that is, about her stint calibrating circuitry
chips with miniature instruments
for Apollo 11, when she needed money
for gas and college—
Like what happened that one time,
when we turned the two mirrors,
Sean and Constance and I,
what happened after we turned them
to face one another, in the sun, was
that the sun became an amplified burst
going down, coming in, the snow-blinded walls
in that one perfect minute
I was standing inside
a star.
- Brian Tierney, from “Rise and Float”