Emily as the Current World Population
& Emily as Swallowing
Darren C. Demaree
Emily as the Current World Population
She’s too much
& she’s not slowing down
& I don’t care.
The end is the end
& she isn’t quite the end.
She’s the marker,
the flourish. The last face
I’ll see. How separate
is this from love?
Emily as Swallowing
Let it be a debate
elsewhere. I’m taken in
& I vanish.
Why worry
about returning?
One of us had to consume
the other. One name
needed to live longer.
It could never be me.
Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-five full-length poetry collections, most recently “Got There: Poems on Vanishing”, (April Gloaming Publishing, April 2026). He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Arts Council Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. His selected poems, Now Flourish Northern Cardinal (Selected Poems 2005-2025) was a finalist for the Ohio Book Award. He is currently working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system.