Emily as a Night Involving Ghosts
Slick-floored
& wanting
to not be alone
when my whole
family is asleep,
I tend to see
horses on
the second floor
of this new house,
which we bought
with money
that wasn’t ours,
which we’ve had
even more children
in. I love that
horse that is not
there. I think
about riding him
when the faces
I shouldn’t know
come back to me.
Emily as the Sky Refused to Burn
That sun
there
& no apocalypse?
We could
refuse
the bullet, no?
I could
unfold
in a shape
different
than
Emily’s face.
Darren Demaree is the author of fourteen poetry collections, most recently Unfinished Murder Ballads (October 2020, Backlash Press). He serves as the Editor in Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and the Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Hotel Amerika, Diode, North American Review, New Letters, Diagram, and The Colorado Review. He lives and writes in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife and children.