Three Poems on Emily, Part 1

by Darren C. Demaree

Erik Mclean

Emily as We Save the Fox

There is the fox

& the agitation

of the fox. The call

to remove the fox

& kill the fox

because it took

a chicken or slashed

to hang on

to the cat’s tail

& everyone loves

that cat. So, we

found the fox

to save the fox,

because fuck

our neighbors

& their chickens.

They don’t get

to carry death

like a promise

to a fox that was

just being a fox.

They don’t get to

become wolves just

to say they’re wolves.

Emily as She Spent Eleven Months with Her Hand on My Chest

Men in my family die young,

or try to die younger

than should be expected

& since I used to swim

in the redundancy of whiskey,

Emily was convinced

for almost a year that I would

die. It was strange. I thought

I was already dead. I thought

she was my reward for saving

a drowning boy when I was twenty.

Did I really quit drinking?

I know reality is questionable at best,

but this really feels like I should ask

as few questions as possible.

Emily as I Held the Harvest

If people outside

of Ohio knew

that everyone in Ohio

is smoking every bloom

we found would they

just let the fire take us?

We are no longer Ohio.

We are the dirt

beaten by the planting

of the same crop

the same crop, the same

fucking crop

& this hysterical loop

is why Emily has me

carry our children

when we leave the house.

There are cars

running children over

on High Street. It’s flames

everywhere. Where

is that silence

coming from? Tell me.

Is this the season

the music comes back?

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Darren C. Demaree’s poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear, in numerous magazines and journals, including Diode, Meridian, New Letters, Diagram, and the Colorado Review. He is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Many Full Hands Applauding Inelegantly (2016, 8th House Publishing). His seventh collection Two Towns Over was selected as the winner of the Louise Bogan Award by Trio House Press, and is scheduled to be released in March of 2018. Demaree is also managing editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. He lives and writes in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife and children.