DARREN C. DEMAREE

PINLESS GRENADES

Your body is in a well-fortified military encampment,
complete with buttons for guards, zippers for fences,
and a very clever bra clasp hiding in the front.

I have decided to enlist in the folds of your starched laundry.

Within your apolitical boundaries I will find my barracks,
my mess hall, and my firing range. I am prepared for six
weeks of hell, prepared to sweat and bleed and break.

I have decided to submit to your barrage of unclear motives.

Some men feel this call to duty when looking down the barrel
of your beginnings, and acknowledging the lead of your
endings. This has no choice, but to end bloody.

I have decided to master the split second of the trigger pulled.

To now, where the first crumb of your existence has led
me to foreign moments of terror. I have taken a plane,
two boats, and innumerable helicopters to be here.

Will you be my Vietnam?
 

Darren C. Demaree lives in Oxford, Ohio. He is currently finishing a masters degree in Creative Writing/Poetry at Miami University. He is the author of a new chapbook entitled Take Your Dulcinea and Run…and is on the poetry selection committee of Oxford Magazine. Most recently he has studied with James Reiss and Lisa Jarnot. A poet, novelist, screenwriter (currently filming those three days in Oxford) Darren is looking forward to moving out of Ohio some day, but until then you can find him doing readings all around Ohio.