"Line Dry" by Leslie Lindsay
Darren C. Demaree | Two poems
Emily as Hands and Eyes
If you want an owl
to mean nothing
you can never see the owl
& never reach out
when it takes flight.
I thought I was an owl
because I watched Emily
see me completely
& lean into this world.
to mean nothing
you can never see the owl
& never reach out
when it takes flight.
I thought I was an owl
because I watched Emily
see me completely
& lean into this world.
Emily as Vanity and Commerce
I’ve started baking cookies
with Emily’s ass on them
to sell on Instagram.
I lost the ability to write
a poem about her that worked
like a knife through other
people’s reality. It’s hybrid
art now. It’s sugar
& smut. It’s truth, baked.
with Emily’s ass on them
to sell on Instagram.
I lost the ability to write
a poem about her that worked
like a knife through other
people’s reality. It’s hybrid
art now. It’s sugar
& smut. It’s truth, baked.
Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-four poetry collections, most recently “Now Flourish Northern Cardinal”, (Small Harbor Publishing, November 2025). 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 currently working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system.
Leslie Lindsay’s work has been published in various literary and art journals, including: Up the Staircase Quarterly (cover art), Another Chicago Magazine (ACM), Wild Roof Journal, Spring-Summer, Brushfire Arts & Literature, The Closed Eye Open, Tiferet Journal, Mud Season Review, Western Michigan Review, Fall 2023, and On the Seawall, Model Home: A Study Under Compression, a photo essay in miniature, April 2023.
