Icehouse

Sharon Coleman

In a late June field,
the lowering sun
keeps western eyes low,
bathes skin and darkens it,
lightens a blue dress.

Twenty paces
from a dry Texas creek
stands an icehouse,
abandoned since the dawn
of petrol’s rise,
before atoms split.

It leans, door ajar,
boards bared and bleached
by a heat ever more common—
only the lock and hinges
are unrusted and holding.

In the doorframe,
aslant and wide open
to the field beyond
a fallen back wall,
I stand, holding upright
a grass blade—
thick, saw-toothed, a foot long.
Its green is silver
in the sunlight—
like a knife blade,
like grey streaks
in my dark hair,
like a poetic line—
poised to tickle,
to thrust between ribs.

© Sharon Coleman

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Sharon Coleman is a fifth generation Northern Californian who has a penchant for learning languages and their entangled word roots. She co-curates the reading series Lyrics & Dirges and co-directs the Berkeley Poetry Festival. Her chapbook Half Circle came out in 2013. She teaches at Berkeley City College. She’s been nominated twice for a Pushcart. Her poetry has recently appeared in Clade Song, Ambush Review, riverbabble, and is forthcoming in Shampoo and Paterson Literary Review.