Ice Pairs

By: Coleman Bomar

Skating 

On his breath

Smooth

And knee scrapingly

Cold 

The I Love Yous

Like Zambonis

Thicken over

A slick

Thesaurus of scars

As she carves

Ice 

Like turkey

And suddenly summer

Is in the movies

But nowhere else

---

Coleman Bomar is a writer who currently resides in Middle Tennessee. His works have been featured by and/or are forthcoming in Drunk Monkeys, Plum Tree Tavern, Prometheus Dreaming, SOFTBLOW, Eunoia Review, Beyond Words, Bewildering Stories, Isacoustic, Moonpark Review, Maudlin House, Star 82 Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Nine Muses Poetry and more.

"Ice Pairs was created, in part, to abstractly describe the feeling of being gaslighted or manipulated, romantically or otherwise. It is also an attempted exploration of codependency. I wanted the language, imagery, and rhythm to be as coldly sharp as possible until the end when we hard switch to the idea of 'summer' as a remote unreal ideal. I wrote the poem late one night in a Waffle House after the ice water made my teeth ache."