Emily as a Smile Would Have Ruined the Picture by Darren C. Demaree

Emily as a Smile Would Have Ruined the Picture

Darren C. Demaree

There was one look, one picture
of Emily in a bathtub right before
we got married, she was travelling

with her family, she was in Madrid
or Paris or Istanbul, she had been gone
for a couple of weeks, so I had been

drunk for a couple of weeks
& she knew that I had been drunk
for a couple of weeks, so she sent me

a picture of her in the bathtub, one
breast covered, hair in a way I’d never
seen before, looking directly at the faucet

& so surely the tatters of my world
collected into a whole woman
so beautiful that when I got the picture

I accidently deleted the picture.
I remember it clearly though, her face,
elegant, angry that she didn’t have

her hands wrapped around the back
of my head to pull me off of the bottle.
She wanted to bury me in her beauty

& that almost worked too well.
I am sober. I don’t have that picture.
I have Emily. She looks at me now.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently “Two Towns Over”, which was selected the winner of the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press. He is the recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, 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.

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