Lunch Series #1 at Pacific City,
Pastel, by John Cummings
Black Holes Ring Like Bells After They Merge
You know that feeling
you get when you drive by
someplace you used to live?
Or when you wave to someone
you think you recognize
but then it turns out it’s not them?
Good night says the city bus.
You’re on your own now. Knock once
and then walk away. Take off
all your clothes if you want to.
Talking to yourself again, are we?
You’ll grow out of it. Just yesterday
you thought a swarm of bees was
your brother. Demanded it explain
itself. Tomorrow you’ll think back
and say man that honey sure was sweet.
You have no choice. You can’t rename
the chambers of the heart. There is no
frictionless way to travel.
______________
Patrick Meeds
Review by Jared Pearce
To me this poem is a rambunctious way of reminding me how weird and strange we all fit onto this planet. I love how the last sentence is true and opens another way of thinking about how tricky the world can be.
Review by William Welch
Meed’s poem grabbed me immediately with its title. Given our media-saturated environment, having a strong hook can help any work of art, and that often means (for poems) writing strong titles. “Black Holes Ring Like Bells After They Merge” works because the initial “huh?” gut-reaction immediately changes to wonder. Imagine something as massive and unimaginable as a black hole ringing like a bell, (I find the sound of bells mesmerizing, which probably enhances the power of this title for me). Of course, the turn around is that black holes can’t truly ring in this way, (there is no sound in space), although they may “ring” in terms of the energy they give off. So there is an underlying paradox or misalignment of terms in the title, which becomes apparent once the sense of wonder transforms into analytical curiosity. This misalignment is the thread which seems to attach the title to the poem itself, which begins with a set of similar uneven juxtapositions in experience: driving by one’s former home (which entails a combination of the familiar and strange), waving at someone you think you know only to find out, oops, that’s not the case. Then we come to these incredibly melancholy lines which are, for me, the heart of the poem: “Good night says the city bus. / You’re on your own now.” The feeling of abandonment is conveyed with so much power that much of the rest of the poem is anticlimactic, upon re-reading it. Interestingly, for a poem whose title suggests the idea of things coming together, the poem presents the opposite—things coming apart, merger and separation being a mutually dependent conceptual pair that seems, on the surface anyway, misaligned and antagonistic.