Reclaiming our own greatness
Central to "Dead Stars" is a shift from smallness, limitation, and fear to greatness, openness, and strength. This movement is visible in the juxtaposition of an un-glamorous everyday action—taking trash out to the street in the suburbs—with majestic images of stars, sea, and land, and becoming like human constellations. In the opening stanza, everything feels bent and exhausted: the speaker and the trees are all bowing, the bark is black, and the leaves are yellow as autumn rots away into a dead silent winter. What passes for romance in this setting is the speaker and her husband pausing to look at Orion—arguably the most obvious constellation, hardly an impressive moment.
It is the speaker's husband saying "we should really learn / some new constellations" that jostles the speaker into a bigger, broader mindset. The second half of the poem then becomes a bold invitation to "reclaim the rising" star-like aspects of ourselves, to "lean... toward / what's larger in us," "to survive more" and "love harder." The speaker remembers her own atomic kinship with stars—referencing the cliché fact that we were once stardust—and seizes upon this as inspiration to become a bigger, bolder, greater version of herself. Almost the entire second half of the poem is written as "What if" questions, calling upon the reader to seek the greatest possibilities for our lives, suggesting they lie beyond what we've ever imagined. The poem, with its central image of "dead stars," becomes an imperative to not settle for small, confined lives, and to believe in our own abilities to survive and thrive.
Selflessness and collective justice
Given the previous theme, we can imagine many pieces of media in which greatness hinges on personal fame, fortune, power, or prestige. However, Limón moves in the opposite direction, towards community-centered justice. In seeking "what's larger within us," Limón's speaker turns not towards individual power but towards love, suggesting we "love harder" in line 19. In lines 20-22 she takes an environmental justice approach, urging us to stand up against the impacts of climate change ("the rising tides") and use our privilege as humans ("our synapses and flesh") to speak in defense of the sea and land, whose "many mute mouths" have much to say but cannot speak for themselves. Immediately after, she suggests we "[use] our bodies to bargain // for the safety of others, for earth" in lines 23-24, recognizing that environmental justice is intertwined with the lives of people around the world. That the speaker would "bargain" her own body (her own safety and survival) for that of others is especially selfless, calling to mind images of protest and activism, confirming that she sees our lives' greatest potential in solidarity. This is reinforced by Limón's use of "we," rather than "I." Consider how different lines 26-27 would sound in singular first-person: "if I launched my demands into the sky, made myself so big / people could point to me..." The poem ends on a massive, galactic scale, its message of inspiration a potent reminder of our interdependence and abilities to fight not just for ourselves, but for each other.
