Emily as I Receive a Handwritten Letter Asking if Darren is My Dead Name

By Darren C. Demaree

Honestly, I like this reading

better than the hundreds

of people that have told me

that they love all the poems

I’ve written about Emily

Dickinson. Pushing past

how this person got my address,

I love the idea that

I’m mid-transition into Emily,

that I’m slowly removing Darren

from this world. How gentle

it would make me to write

ten thousand poems to coax

out my true self. To love me

so much that I dedicated myself

to that path. Would me as Emily

write a Darren as poem?

Absolutely not. I get this one.

This one is as much love as I want

from her. This one erases me

& I don’t mind that so much.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-three poetry collections, most recently So Much More, (Small Harbor Publishing, November 2024). 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. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and the Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system.