OXIDANT | ENGINE : Issue 3

Darren C. Demaree

Trump As Fire Without Light #514

I can’t do eight summers in this beehive. Ohio is all dressed in my grandfather’s clothes. Ohio says it will shoot me if I walk up this driveway as a liberal again. Ohio says I’m not getting a dollar from Ohio. I’m fairly certain Ohio is going to die with me in the same room. I’ll be angry. I will cry and gnash my teeth when my Ohio leaves me a generation closer to becoming exactly what Ohio doesn’t want me to become.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of six poetry collections, most recently “Many Full Hands Applauding Inelegantly” (2016, 8th House Publishing). His seventh 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.