Emily as The Two Sisters by Théodore Chassérieau
by Darren C. Demaree

      
    Gold dresses
    & red capes,
    hair as dark
    as a shadow
    mounting
    the distance,
    
    Emily is two
    women,
    but really
    is the one set
    of knuckles
    curling tightly
    
    around a gift
    I refuse to hide.
    She is violent
    in her expression
    & that part
    isn’t mythology,
    
    that part vibrates
    past colors
    & past bodies
    & just when I think
    she is mine
    there is a new grip
    
    to prove 
    that I am hers
    & I am hers 
    the same 
    way the moon
    belongs to the wolf
    
    that clears
    the landscape
    with a stance
    that looks to crowd
    out the forest
    from simple night.
    
    
Packingtown Review – Vol. 24, Fall 2025

Darren C. Demaree's poetry has appeared in Hotel Amerika, Diode, North American Review, New Letters, Diagram, and the Colorado Review. Darren is the author of twenty-two poetry collections, most recently blue and blue and blue (July 2024, Fernwood Press) and serves as the Editor in Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry.

  1. Clyde Kessler
    Soon Enoughpoetry