Poem For Katie, Queen of Ohio #53

Darren C. Demaree

Keep your hard spots hard. There will be decades

of safe, naked time
water that runs

from Knox County
to Licking County

& that can be your only
momentum for some good,

long summers. Until then,
do not be tender

with any part of Ohio. Most
of Ohio is still a trap.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of fourteen poetry collections, most recently Unfinished Murder Ballads (October 2020, Backlash Press).  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.