SCUTTERFIELD, ICE STORM

by Tila Neguse

---

That year we went head first into the ice. 
When the sunlight lent the sky to the rain 
and the rain to the ice, we watched the 
naked branches of the magnolias bend 
under the weight of the elements, snap
and wrestle with the electric wires on the 
way down. Like nordic fisherman, ghetto
vikings, we made sleds out of mattresses 
and box springs left by the dumpster. We 
slid slick down the ice-covered cracked 
pavement and when the lights went out, 
we sat on the porches with flashlights in
the cold and slush and watched the icicles 
drip from the power-lines like diamonds.

---

Tila Neguse is a poet and the Senior Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity (CRE2) at Washington University in St. Louis. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College.