#22
the last material of the last thunderstorm will come from a tantrum from the male half of a god that thought initially about benevolently bowing out of existence whispering a syllable of the answer & then could not help but scream is own name loud enough to take what’s left of our atmosphere
#23
middle tongue the carrying tongue the water beneath the ice tongue when will you lash the way we need you to when will you displace the weight of mercy we do not yet need mercy we need to punish the imposters of hope we need to hold the mercy to our faces while the middle tongue ruins the revolution-killers in a most public of ways
#24
the grope is to be expected we’ve all been groped like a cup that has been dropped into our water to sate the thirst of a monster we misunderstood as a familiar faces those familiar faces are almost all masks we don’t get that water back we don’t get that water back we don’t get that water back we must resist the urge to drown the holders of the cup with the rest of what we have no no no it’s our right to give of ourselves until we find that last gasp that first understanding of what can kiss our names without erasing our names completely.
Darren C. Demaree‘s poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including Diode, Meridian, New Letters, Diagram, and the Colorado Review. He is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently Two Towns Over (March 2018), which was selected as the winner of the Louise Bogan Award by Trio House Press. He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. He currently lives and writes in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.