We Panic, We Remember by Matthew Isaac Sobin

We Panic, We Remember

by Matthew Isaac Sobin

Bodies plunge

out of light. Though it isn’t lack of light but coldness

that sends us home, seeping through premade meals

that nourish the student body. A body’s response

reminds us where to find good citizens who worry

from love. And who surges at elsewhere as elsewhere

amplifies possibilities. You can see their fear

as white light returns, terror at whether their promised

hours have been withdrawn.

One week later, phones flash

yellow with news of the quake, shallow below the roiling

Pacific off Humboldt County. It doesn’t matter

if they’ve seen The Day After Tomorrow or another

SciFi flick—each student projects the same image

in their mind’s eye: a wave cresting the skyline, crashing

across the Bay, devouring lowlands, ripping and crawling

up into the hills. Calm, stay calm. Because we can’t know

how things will go, how momentum moves once it’s begun

progressing inside each mind.

Meanwhile, a poor

pupfish sloshes in the desert mouth of Devils Hole,

it’s never seen the ocean, cannot fathom a tsunami,

yet its ancestors’ blood whispered the word seiche, seiche

huddled in the travertine shelf’s warm waters

to issue not so much a warning but to say

this is what to do when everything is washed away.

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Matthew Isaac Sobin’s (he/him) first book was the science fiction novella, The Last Machine in the Solar System. Recent poems have appeared in Ghost City Review, JAKE, MAYDAY Magazine, The Hooghly Review, Stone Circle Review, and Hog River Press. He received an MFA from California College of the Arts. When he’s not teaching middle school, you may find him selling books at Books on B in Hayward, California. He is on Twitter @WriterMattIsaac, Instagram @matthewisaacsobin, and Bluesky @matthewisaacsobin.bsky.social. His Linktree is linktr.ee/matthewisaacsobin.