i told my children when the blisters come then you’ll finally have the first motion learned the second motion will pop and bleed your hands the third motion will strip to remove your earlier efforts i don’t know what will be piling up beside your feet but everything every job every passion is an effort game never forget this your body should fail completely when the time comes that you must slow down at all


Darren C. Demaree

Darren'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 eight poetry collections, most recently Two Towns Over(March 2018), which was selected as the winner of the Louise Bogan Award by Trio House Press. Darren is the Managing Editor of The Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. He lives and writes in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.