Poems and Texts

“For Love” by Allison Cobb

For Love

I was born

because of love

inside a weapons lab.

The End—

Omega

Bridge—connects

the town, the little

boxes lit along

the cliffs. For love

the men awake

and cross

the bridge to labor

on their bombs

for love. For love

becomes a body

in the world. And fear.

A fear comes with it

to the world, a cry

in air burst first

from lungs. And grief,

the instant born,

the shape of what

will come, the shape

of what they’d seen. Become

then students of

the sun, to will that

fire here to burn. The bomb

makers always burned

with so much love—the father

pillars of my child self

in church who prayed

the sun to earth

to burn up

everything

for love. For love

-fused fear.

For grief.

Allison Cobb

Allison Cobb is the author of Born2 (Chax Press); Green-Wood (Factory School); Plastic: an autobiography (Essay Press EP series); and After We All Died (Ahsahta Press), which was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. She was born in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the first atomic bombs were made. She works for the Environmental Defense Fund and lives in Portland, Oregon, where she co-curates The Switch reading, art, and performance series.

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