Love Lesson #7 from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The body is an honest animal.
But whose should I believe,
yours or mine?
Want a taste?
The pleasure of eating becomes a sin
when someone fears
they’re just sinners,
or you are sin:
what marinade of tears and love and joy
did your thighs and heart, liver and wings
wade through
to get to me?
What pool has steeped the body of you
so that the body of me
craves you inside?
Why can I not want the simple completeness
of beans and rice or the clarity
of chicken soup, the fullness
of sag paneer at Bollywood
or the comfort of paprikas
from my mother’s pot?
And how does evil taste? A little bit chalky.
Why can we not be as easy as licks
of pistachio ice cream churned
from rosewater and milk?
—
This selection comes from Lisa Cheby’s Love Lessons from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, available from Dancing Girl Press. Purchase your copy here!
Lisa Cheby is a writer and a librarian in a public high school in Los Angeles, CA. She earned an MFA from Antioch, is an MLIS candidate at San Jose State University, and is the poetry editor for Annotation Nation. Her poems and reviews have appeared in various journals including The Rumpus, Eclipse, The Mom Egg, The Citron Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, Tidal Basin Review and A cappella Zoo and in the anthologies Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Book and The Burden of Light: Poems on Illness and Loss. Her first book, Love Lessons from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is available from Dancing Girl Press.
Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.
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