Emily as We Try to Buy a New House #5
All of my domestic rage
is firmly entrenched
in the idea
that I would be better off
if I knew how to turn
an oak tree into a house
than I would be searching
for a house
with an oak tree in the yard.
• • •
Emily as a Refusal to Flinch
I am comfortable
in a ghost town
where there is one path
littered
with detachments
that never came back
& haunt so loosely
they aren’t remembered.
I grew up in a home
that was a ghost town.
I don’t remember
which bodies bothered
to reach up from the carpet
to pull out the hair
from above my ankles,
but when Emily sees
my legs beginning to vanish
she gets violent-
ly lonesome. I have seen
her whisper in the ear
of my father the words
of a new ritual.
Nobody will fully explain
to me what’s happening,
but I’m sleeping better now,
with her fist in my chest.
• • •
Emily as One Wire
I have seen mountains
rise with the patience
of many stones.
I have seen a pile of wires
connected to nothing
& then, a plug!
The electric works
different than the stone.
The electric works.
• • •
Emily as I am a Spark
I was a lit match
before Emily.
It was terrible.
It’s much better
to live within
her bonfire.
It’s much better
to be consumed
by this spectacle.
• • •
Darren Demaree’s poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including Hotel Amerika, Diode, North American Review, New Letters, Diagram, and the Colorado Review. He also appeared in BoomerLitMag’s Fall, 2017 issue. He is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently ‘Two Towns Over‘ (March 2018), which was selected as the winner of the Louise Bogan Award by Trio House Press. He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry.