ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Darren C. Demaree is the author of fourteen poetry collections, most recently Unfinished Murder Ballads, (October 2020, Backlash Press). 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.
Also by Darren C. Demaree:
So Clearly Beautiful Emily As Sometimes the Forest Wants the Fire A Fire Without Light
So Clearly Beautiful Emily As Sometimes the Forest Wants the Fire A Fire Without Light
Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry:
Before the War Begins the War Begins
Emily As Written By Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Darren C. Demaree
Poets Resist
Edited by Len Lawson
August 13, 2020
Edited by Len Lawson
August 13, 2020
i do not ask how to love without a ceiling i do not ask how to drown without a river i do not ask how to hear the paper bells
written for Zeina Hashem Beck, after the explosion at the port in the city of Beirut
no nation wants its people
to outlive it
even if we lived in the song cave
gave that depth a new name
the opening to all that splendid black
would not allow us to leave it
without first touching our bones
now now now i am told
that the absence of hands can crater a home
that not looking for the spark
in a world on fire pierces the air
into witness
burns more beds than monsters
& makes us all ghost children
that must carry dead children towards
the hyphens that cannot create a new body
that cannot silent the beating
our heart takes
that blasts open fate’s haughty smile
& leaves our jaws without a joy
that can nightsong in earnest
or dream about with a full mouth
of our city’s plated history
this steam this smoke
that is still rising today
will want to loose the fire
from the ashes
& all we can do
without a vibrating farewell
to these terrible men that only taste meat
& can only call their ships toys
& their people candles to be lit in their name
& celebrate that a corpse
is not jobless because it fulfills the need
to be a dead thing
is hope that when the poets choose
to become sharp stars
they are not gentle when they blanket us
that their words can smother
& wound
the escaping limits of the time this world
decided it didn’t belong here
Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
