All All #11 by Darren Demaree

Every sunset is bloody. Nations
just wait for fireworks to pop off
so the bombs can have a good rhythm 
one county over. I’ve been floating
in a river that was erasing
a small town fifty miles downstream. 
I had a nice day. I watch each dusk
& I count the bats as bodies, names
that emerge once darkness can kiss them.

Darren Demaree’s poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including Hotel Amerika, Diode, North American Review, New Letters, Diagram, and the Colorado Review. He is the author of twenty-three poetry collections, most recently 'So Much More' (November 2024, Harbor Editions). He is the Editor in Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living and writing in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.