A room
kills itself
in the room
we gave it
All my looking at the word ‘sea’
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
Dog died of old age in a motel room in Ohio
Idk seems wrong, seems like autofiction
taught time
nakedness
I’m not photogenic
being sad
for mom
I am ugly in a mirror that cares for my teeth
I washed another’s body
longer
than you
At least in hell you can think about hell
hunger
in Ohio
is quiet
for two
Each beast tires differently of god
suicide, or clothes
Happy
for mom
Dear Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi,
I wrote so many letters to Ethan Hawke. I was overweight with doom. My imagery was photographed fasting. A thorn and a spear dreamt of being on the same side of god. I have read or now am reading Disintegration Made Plain and Easy and got get super drunk. Ethan Hawke disappears in the capital of absence. I’m not funny. My joke about ache and echo never grows balls enough to go long in the tooth. Nakedness goes from person to person. I fall in love with an animal pacing outside of a theater so full of self harming children that I yearn for that future where I continue to read your book instead of reviewing every film showing at a covid porn marathon. Let’s not be sick. Am I in front of a mirror that believes in god? Anyway, into my dream comes all of my skin looking for a map might it find the blue pen that sends the devil’s blood to hell. Last night was perfectly boring. Last night was perfectly boring.
A deer to kiss my neck
A horse to want a wrist, oh
wait
The moment just after the tackle when we’re all still and can’t be seen together
I don’t love anyone until I drink
The being that changes into your mother
is your mother
I shape myself to death
Miss you
into leaving
in the poem
I leave
the poem
to situate
his body
None of this is interesting. Two people born lonely say I do at different times. We watch our seeing. Cigarettes keep me from dreaming about snow. Ohio deer mock windows for bleeding like a perfect mirror. Weird alcohol machines program invisible reset buttons. Ohio boys howl three times milk. Death is a magic trick that puts god to sleep.
I thought they said call off the dolls. God is the different word for god. I rolled my brother’s eye under a door and into a room the color of his eye. Grief is the last cigarette of kingdom. Are you watched like god or watched like a baby? (how to tell if you’re a baby) How lonely: I dream of doing the job I have. What does a mouth do but reach for a mouth? Fall asleep waiting for an angel to eat your teeth. The child I’m selling comes with a gun.
raccoon light
loneliness
your mouth
no mouth
has
autofiction is isolating
or god
doesn’t write
about women
raccoon light
cancer in the skinned person’s empty hospital takes my cock’s confession
the beginning
grief, ashtray, arson
I talk my horror angel into never again using an oven
eggs
in microwaves
miss
my missed
& secretly
ate
teeth
