Emily As the Morning Stalls

Darren C. Demaree

I could see the lights
were still on at the empty stadium
that had been full

the night before, had
swayed with a thousand small-
town bodies,

that had cheered the ruining
of their children’s bodies,
that had spilled popcorn

everywhere in the process
& I could see the person
whose job it was to turn

those lights off pull up
in his truck to do what he should
have done the night before

& I could almost hear him
mutter as he moved slowly enough
to remember the ruining

of his own body amidst
the old popcorn that stank
with the smell of real butter

aging in the morning sun
& before I could find the words
to tell Emily all about it,

she wrapped herself inside me
& I remembered the ways
I ruined my body

& how little it mattered
that I did those things
without a crowd there

& before I could say either
way, I’m done with the ruining
of bodies she tightened

her fists in my chest hair
& pulled hard enough
to remind me that I was hers

& I was to ruin what
she told me to. It’s the agency
I don’t miss at all.

It’s those occasions when
she shakes a thousand pounds
of metal by stomping her feet

that make me forget
about those many nights I chose
the whiskey over her

& when she turns off the lights
exactly when she is supposed to
I breathe so deeply

that my body knows
exactly how young I can still be
with her watching.

© 2018 Darren C. Demaree

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Darren C. Demaree is the author of seven poetry collections, most recently A Fire Without Light (2017, Nixes Mate Books). His eighth collection Two Towns Over was recently selected the winner of the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press and is due out March 2018. He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife and children.