for Sam Roxas-Chua

The sun is never white.
The chest collects
only breakable bones.
Each new day
carries with it a tribe
so native to this
moment the wars
do not have the time
to fill our throats
with a second cry.
I look to focus my eyes
on the landscape
& the fog that once
hugged Ohio charges
me.  I relax my gaze
& I see Emily
as a red egg, paused
on the impossible tip
of love.  I see her
in defiance of all want.
A table cannot starve.

Originally in Jet Fuel review

Darren C. Demaree is the author of eleven poetry collections, most recently “Emily As Sometimes the Forest Wants the Fire”, (June 2019, Harpoon Books). He is the recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louis Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. 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.