by Matthew Isaac Sobin

I’ve been threatening my mother saying I will write a poem
about her. She says I only write poems about my father. And I say

be careful what you wish for, wielding banter as a bewildering shield.
You have to be so vigilant around a poet, lest they transmute your grief;

seize the narrowest slice of life & blow it up into a world. Like how
he was always worse than his worst outburst. The stunned face of the kid

who throttled me on the school bus, the strange threat. If you touch
my son again, I’ll touch you. A violet of love. Or how close we hold

marital oaths as sickness descends, because even a starless sky is
reciprocal. Safeguarding heavy microscopes, turning old toys into centerpieces:

we are but one insect wing away, why idling is death for some
& breath for others. Because shutting down a spouse’s phone after years

means you can never learn anything new about them
from a stranger. How grief poems & love poems often inhabit

separate regions of the Venn diagram. Do we shade red or blue, purple
or gray, listening to the slow ring, the inhale before hello

Matthew Isaac Sobin’s (he/him) first book was the science fiction novella, The Last Machine in the Solar System. His poems are in or forthcoming from The Lumiere Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Midway Journal, Orange Blossom Review, Ghost City Review, MAYDAY Magazine, Roi Fainéant Press, The Hooghly Review, and elsewhere. He received an MFA from California College of the Arts. You may find him selling books at Books on B in Hayward, California. He is on Twitter @WriterMattIsaac and Instagram @matthewisaacsobin. His Linktree is linktr.ee/matthewisaacsobin.