THE TIDAL DISRUPTION EVENT NAMED ASASSN-14li* 

Martina reisz Newberry

Some excursive, no-name star... 
believed that space was unlimited. 

It must have been terribly young, 
achingly lovely, somewhat irresponsible 

as young things so often are, or maybe
toked up on atomic and molecular gas. 

I’m certain that Ms/Mr No-Name Star
saw the future and journeyed on (despite 

what the future held, headed straight for
that black, impoverished pool of ... 

whatever it is a pool of... 
and was devoured, torn apart 

as if by cosmic wolves.
I can’t help but be reminded of Coleridge 

who saw the future of the world and bent
words toward that future. He once took 

a ship to Malta & back and, on shore, 
watched silently as crows took over 

the branches of a tree, (daring him
to do something about it. Word has it that 

he went quite willingly to his death from some
no-name lung ailment which came about 

because he so loved opium. 
The tragically destroyed star 

would have presumed all of this. 
Stars understand everything. 

*ASASSN-14li, was a “tidal disruption”–a star wandering too close to a 3-million-solar-mass black hole was torn apart. The debris gathered into an accretion disk around the black hole. Data from NASA's Swift satellite show that the initial formation of the disk was shaped by interactions among incoming and outgoing streams of tidal debris. NASA.GOV 

Martina Reisz Newberry’s most recent books are NEVER COMPLETELY AWAKE ( from Deerbrook Editions), and TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME (Unsolicited Press). She is also the author of WHERE IT GOES (Deerbrook Editions). LEARNING BY ROTE (Deerbrook Editions) and RUNNING LIKE A WOMAN WITH HER HAIR ON FIRE: Collected Poems (Red Hen Press).  

Newberry has been included in It Happened Under Cover, Ascent Aspirations’ first two hard-copy anthologies, also in the anthologies In The Company Of Women, Blessed Are These Hands and Veils, and Halos & Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women. She has been widely published in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. 

She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo Colony for the Arts, Djerassi Colony for the Arts, and Anderson Center for Disciplinary Arts. 

Passionate in her love for Los Angeles, Martina currently lives there with her husband, Brian, a Media Creative. 

Visit her website at martinanewberry.com for information, purchasing, blogs, poems.