Two Poems by Darren Demaree

EMILY AS THE CHERRY TREE IN WINTER
Darren Demaree

The main road
is closed.  This is the wrong season
for fruit.

I climb the tree to spite Ohio.
I hold on to Emily
because I am too simple

to provide any real answers.
There’s a bucket of rock salt
in the garage,

but nobody cares about that.
I spend most winters remembering
how red

she can get in the summer. She likes
to remind me that she’s mostly
made up at this point.

---

EMILY AS THE BLACK HOOD WE DRAPED OVER OUR FACES
Darren Demaree

It was a new game
we’d never played before.
It took me an hour 

to figure out that this
wasn’t a game.  Emily
wanted us to hide

with the near-holy silence
of our togetherness
weighted down slightly.

If I was meant to say
God’s name I ruined it
by whispering Emily.

---

Darren C. Demaree is the author of ten poetry collections, most recently “Lady, You Shot Me”, which was published by 8th House Publishing. He is the recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louis Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.