New Poem by Darren C. Demaree: “Emily as There is a Prison”

Despite every dictator (and aspiring dictator) assuming that they alone can stop the arrow of time and prevent their own mortality, dictators always inexorably die in the end (“One forgets that one is a dead man talking to dead men”). And the beloved people (who always universally revile the dictator by the end) continue living their own lives, enjoying a gradually increasing sense of freedom.

The scars of war are everywhere in Kharkiv. Destroyed or damaged apartment complexes, stores, hospitals, museums, and schools litter its urban landscape. The Russian full-scale invasion of February 2022 has not just killed or injured thousands of the city’s residents it has embedded itself into the psyches of young and old living in Ukraine’s second largest city. Yet, people carry on despite living under the dark shadow of Russia less than 20 miles away.