Two Towns Over by Darren C. Demaree
Winner of the 2017 Louise Bogan Award
Trio House Press, 2017
It’s late summer. The wildfire smoke from British Columbia has wafted over the Pacific Northwest in a poisonous haze, forcing everyone to either don N-95 masks or stay indoors with windows shut tight. Somehow, this smothering apocalyptic backdrop seems fitting as I lose myself in Two Towns Over, Darren C. Demaree’s poetic rendering of substance abuse in Everytown, Ohio.
There is probably a wise old saying about how it’s necessary to name a problem before you can begin to fix it. I think of dear friends who’ve attended AA meetings and that crucial first step: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.” Demaree does the crucial work of naming, of seeing and owning the problem, beginning with very first page: “This book is dedicated to those in Ohio and all over the world suffering from addiction to drugs or alcohol. We see you. We love you. We can and will do better to be advocates for your care.” As the dedication indicates, Demaree’s object is not to glorify self-destructive habits, but to see them, describe their depths, so we can begin to lower the ropes.
Demaree’s collection is bookended by two long series. It begins with a suite of 10 “Sweet Wolf” poems, the title indicating the paradox of drug use.
We know if we allow the sweet wolf
into our veins it will become
the alpha inside our own bodies& yet, what a pool to drown in.
The collection ends with 20 poems all titled “Ode to the Corner of the Drug House Down the Gravel Road Off the Two-Lane Highway.” These odes share a common speaker, an addict, who in the end (spoiler alert!) is arrested and carted away. The Sweet Wolf and Ode to the Corner series are numbered, but the numbers skip: 1,2,4,7,12. Readers get the sense that Demaree has selected the best of the many he has written and/or that there are purposeful gaps.
Between these two series, we’re taken on a whirlwind tour of smalltown Ohio where drug abuse festers: Jefferson Township, Jelloway, Middlebury Township, Monroe Township, Hunt, Howard, Rich Hill, etc. The last map poem, “Mount Vernon, Ohio,” is a pivotal poem that lands us squarely in the poet’s own hometown. Demaree knocks over the impulse to hold the problem at a distance, to say there’s drug abuse two towns over. Nope. He sees it, names it:
Most of the dead cops
are ours. There is
lightning in our blood
& we are so tired
of being tired
of trying to keep up
with our own blood.
Demaree’s straightforward, pared down lines and gut-punch style put this reader in mind of William Carlos Williams and Charles Bukowski. Two Towns Over is an act of bravery, detailing Ohio’s (and by extension the world’s) dark underbelly so it can, one hopes, be brought to light.
Dayna Patterson is a former managing editor of Bellingham Review, the founding editor-in-chief of Psaltery & Lyre, and the poetry editor for Exponent II Magazine. She is a co-editor of Dove Song: Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry (Peculiar Pages, 2018). Her creative work has appeared recently in AGNI, Hotel Amerika, Western Humanities Review, So to Speak, and Zone 3. Her first poetry collection, If Mother Braids a Waterfall, is forthcoming from Signature Books in 2020.