Spring 2015, Volume 18

Poetry by Darren C. Demaree

Emily As A Progressive Speculation

If we,
finally,
can learn to think like smugglers,
learn to guard the darkness
with opportunity
& stretch our dreams
like shadows over shadows
then when any sliver of light
finds them,
we will be able to claim the score.
We will,
finally,
be able to instruct
our own recreation
as a zoom to the petal
of our own shrieking desires
& that will make us dangerous
& possibly whole
as two
living together
as one.

Emily As This Version Contains A Body

Overlooking the leaf
& the sleeping scrutiny
of the audience that is Emily, always
Emily watching
& gauging me as what was,
what is, what will be
& what could possibly go very wrong,
I dive into the tufts of grass
that have been lifted in flight
to my height in the tree
of our lives
& I am all camouflage, wishing
to hold the judgment unobtainable.
I am always an object to be sized up
& because of that I have no true shape.
I am exhausted by Emily,
but just maybe I had this coming,
when I chose this particular tree.

Emily As That Which Sparks With No Warning

for Hannah Stephenson

If the tulip is all flame
& arboreal strobe light,
the hide within of that flowering
will be paper thin, non-existent
& any combustion
will take the room without warning.
Emily always says she considers
the pattern of the tulip
& what it can do to a garden
to be a crackling
invention of the rooted skins
& if she could, if she really could
she would litter each ground
like it was shore on the firmament
of her own ecstatic wiggle
& that lightning
would turn us all into beach glass.
Emily knows enough
about shaping glass that she might
turn us all into vases to keep
her fire-flowers once they leave
our garden, which was never planted
to hold anything for very long.

 

 

 


BIO:
My poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including the
South Dakota Review, Meridian, The Louisville Review, Grist, and the Colorado Review.

I am the author of
As We Refer To Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art Nor Prayer (2015, 8th House). I am the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology.

I am currently living and writing in Columbus, Ohio with my wife and children.