Emily as The Moon Rising over the Sea by Caspar David Friedrich
Emily is two women
& two, tall ships leaving the bay
& the struggle
is to look up at the moon
& not say she is the moon as well.
I get overwhelmed
as her landscape. I need her
or there is no painting.
I need her or my art is a cliff
at night. I am not broadminded.
I stumbled into this cruel
& useless world
& all this violent light
has shorn my best intentions
into a dusk with Emily.
What am I do with all of this?
I sit here. I look out. One day,
I’ll head down to the water.
Emily as an Amazing Collision of the Vulnerable and the Mighty
What I want to say
is I’m not grounded
in the mysteries
of an intimate glimpse
of the given
& the made, Emily
as a bared crosshatching
or a transformative force
or anything productive at all.
I’m here, draped in
a terrible clarity,
pacing for show until
a delight I haven’t earned
rediscovers my worship
& drags me forward.
Emily as Afternoon Deepens
All I want is a nap
where my face would pass
& rest in the happy
& unclean inventions
of my generous, dark
Emily. Have you
ever gotten lost in
your own bed? It changes
the weather. It chases
the sun. If you know
what you’re doing
you’ll have two reservations
for great restaurants
all set for six o’clock
& another at eight o’clock
& a pizza in the freezer
in case you fall asleep
after you fell asleep
& in case your Emily
tries to breathe you in
so deeply that food
becomes luxury, becomes
reward, becomes the last
howling grip of reality,
let it become a second
hunger, a lesser hunger,
a field to play in.
Darren C. 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 is the author of twenty-two poetry collections, most recently 'blue and blue and blue' (July 2024, Fernwood Press). He is the Editor in Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living and writing in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.