words toward Darren C Demaree’s ‘Now Flourish Northern Cardinal’ (selected poems 2005-2025, Small Harbor Publishing (2025))

Now Flourish Northern Cardinal
selected poems 2005-2025, Darren C Demaree
Small Harbor Publishing, 2025

Addiction is the breadcrumb that the body follows to wine. I don’t know what this turns into. Darren C Demaree writes inside of the southern flying vividity of awestruck nostalgias. Do you know Emily? Does anyone? I’ve been here, twice, with you. By Emily I mean say another’s name. See what happens. See what doesn’t and make a mirror to weigh the moon. Here is what I know: I stop drinking to read. The reading takes a lot from forever. Takes, enough. I’ve said it before I’ve said it, but Demaree is a writer of possessive avoidance that owns its meeting of obsessions. His faith in nowness is a verse that caves into tomorrow with crumbling’s last seed. Put sleep to sleep and the sheep to bed. Demaree’s ‘panic of the living’ will sober one to resurrection. I’ve been reading for a minute, here, in an Ohio that can age one to the closest hour. Demaree’s Now Flourish Northern Cardinal (selected poems 2005-2025, Small Harbor Publishing) is a thing that’s been a thing named by tomorrow’s animal. Leave it like Eden. Find it like nakedness. Lose it like a cloth you moved over the skin of a loved one’s cosplaying ghost. I don’t know. I call things beautiful all the time. Yet, I have no time. Now Flourish Northern Cardinal deserves the clock you’re looking at.

If you are in Ohio next week, check out this reading at Two Dollar Radio

Also, I've written on the previous works of Darren C Demaree here, here, and here.

And some readings I hosted for the 'I Think I Can't Speak For Everyone Here' reading series with Darren C Demaree are here and here