Issue 22

Alan Chazaro

The process in which a cloud of interstellar gas and dust collapses to form a new star. This can only happen in a gaseous nebulae but who really knows WTF a gaseous nebulae is? In middle school, I’d wanted a Terrell Owens 49ers jersey. The cardinal red fabric with deep gold and black shadow on the block-numbered 81. Because a star is a star is a star when you’re a 14-year-old boy. And I think peering up at the stars in the night sky is overrated. All the work has already been done for you. I’d rather look up midday and trace the emptiness, fill it with imagined constellations of myself, infinite and imperfect. Infinity: every star-traveler’s dream. Or nightmare. A never-ending rushmovement of space matter and destinations. Sounds terrifying. A star bursting across your dreams. And if this poem is a form of confession then I might as well tell you that the first person I ever hated was Michael Jordan. I don’t think it was envy, just my dislike for anybody so bright that they could scorch others. Who wants to support another human’s scorching? And isn’t too much scorching some type of colonialism? But maybe I’m lying. Maybe the first person I ever hated was earlier than that. Maybe it was one of those Europeans you had to read about in textbooks. Those stories about who discovered our world in history class. Those men must’ve known everything about the way a star collapses. About gas. About dust.