17 December 2006 | Vol. 6, No. 4

Ice Bone

For Edward, in memory

Say the black road

is a bleached crest raveling


the one distance

meant for you (all of us).


Turn the stars

that night into light


animals. Aspirin moon

in its place glowing


over an ice bone

sea, the lives of your yellow


blanket thrown over

(hush). Make it August


(our summer) in Maine. Warm

stolen beer, adult beer


—Heineken—your mouth

on the bottle, my shoulder


my nipple (making out

to a manual—your boy-smell


is Camels, Ivory soap). We sailed

over clearness


in your small, white boat.

Take the tank top


I wore—its cool

Indian design—the pattern


paste it to this map

of—(your hand)—nodded off


at the wheel—I hear

the obit names you "seaman"


you'd become a (cigar box

—sea shells and snap


shots—the whale postcard

signed LOVE YOU) captain


summed up, wrapped around everything

now (a cement truck).

About the author:

Lauren Goodwin Slaughter is Assistant Professor of English at The University of Alabama at Birmingham and Fiction Editor for the online journal, DIAGRAM. Her poems have recently appeared in Salt Hill, Crab Orchard Review, Blue Mesa Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Juked, 5_trope, and also on Verse Daily.

For further reading:

See the complete list of work by Lauren Goodwin Slaughter at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 6, No. 4, where "Ice Bone" ran on December 17, 2006. List other work with these same labels: poetry, editors' select, elegy.

42opus is an online magazine of the literary arts.

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