By Jedediah Flores
Transcribed concrete poem where the following text forms the image of a mirror:
Once a year I go down
into the concrete bunker and
I make soup and live inside blankets.
I know when it’s time because a terrestrial
pallor mortis sets in. “It’s an apocalypse out
there,” my roommate says as she stands by the
window and snow colonizes the land outside. Once
a year the earth dies a white death.
I take a mirror with me into the
concrete bunker. At the end of the
world, you might want artifacts to
preserve your humanity. A book,
a pen? Humans love marking
things. “I was here,” we say on cave
walls. “I existed.” We are desperate
for a witness to our lives. Do you think a history is only
real if it’s written down? Before the gunmen scarred
the land with parchment and ink and blood, did anyone
exist at all? Their voices traveled from voice to vo ice
until they were captured by a man’s pen, or they fad ed.
Do I only exist if they can capture me? Do I only exist if somebody is
watching? In the mirror is a black hole. The pale winter makes me
forget, and the yawning wound between myself and the mot her-
land is a mouth. I am an estranged child, alone and hungry in
my concrete walls. Sound is a vibration of energy that travels
through a medium. Did you know that black holes are
singing? They emit waves of pressure through the
gas around them, an interstellar voice trembling
in the dark. At 57 octaves below middle
C, black holes sing their deep
cosmic song. I
look in the mirror, brown
and alone,
and the
mirror
asks
me,
“If a
black
hole
sings in an abyss,
and nobody is around…” I am my own witness. I am witness to
the voices in the dark chasm severing me from my ancestors. I live and I sing and I exist.
When spring kisses the earth back to life, I know it’s safe to leave the bunker. The soil is
warm, trees breathing in the wind. “That was a rough winter,” my roommate,
pale and human, says at the beginning of the world.
Her voice is a vibration of energy through the air. “It was,” I agree.
