Catch by Allison Cobb
What moment was
the moment
my mom died.
We weren’t sure
my dad and I—
we hold that
hard gift close
between—the
us that makes
us selves who
stood beside
her birdlike
curled in—
Oh. It is
a moment—breath
and then
it stops—that’s
real, declare
the time—we had
a clock there, red
with numbers—
Mom. She left
before. I held
her hand, no
living touch
came back. She left
before her breath—
I never
past self would have
written this—
naïve I thought
to cling to souls
of individuals, like characters
in books. We’re
bones and flesh and maybe
light I thought—no
more we just
disintegrate
to light and dirt—
we do I think, but Mom
that one
specific form
remains. Or did.
Or does—Hi
Mom I joking
half say Hi
she says it
back—but not
in speech she—
here she’s not in
speech or space or
words crunch
bone too
animal, too
fixed but she
communicates
in feel force—
9/11 anniversary
when I woke I felt
her soft around embrace—
Much earlier, days after
she had died, my dad
went cycling through guilt
for all the things he’d failed
her in life—the ice he left
outside, she slipped
and broke her shoulder—
Speeding down the freeway as he spoke,
I rode behind him in the sun
along the river—fast-force
then I felt her
shake it off as
nothing, like a fly
on horseflesh—Pah!
It’s nothing! Flick it off!
a shake and then a leap
like joy, I knew
my sister felt it
too my dad too
sunk in self in
grief. I feel just
joy from
her, my sister
said it gently and with
love for all
his hurt. But I felt
something else—her
bursting fierce
impatience for
our joining her
in joy, it crackle
sparks—catch
it
says catch
up
*
Allison Cobb is the author of After We All Died (Ahsahta Press); Plastic: an autobiography (Essay Press EP series, with a full-length edition forthcoming from Nightboat Books); Born2 (Chax Press); and Green-Wood, originally published by Factory School with a new edition in 2018 from Nightboat Books. Cobb’s work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, and many other journals. She was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and National Poetry Series; has been a resident artist at Djerassi and Playa; and received fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commission, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Cobb works for the Environmental Defense Fund and lives in Portland, Oregon, where she co-hosts The Switch reading, art, and performance series and performs in the collaboration Suspended Moment.
