Love Lesson #24 from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

all this world’s an open

grave

as love is

open for fallage in by

my unchosen one:

I am God’s promise,

but what of your promise of love?

We toil against gravity all day.

I do not want to wait
to fall
in line

I claw out of the gravity
of your promise

and engrave my own
in earth:     do not surrender

to gravity:

though you lie open

as a grave

sooner or later
that excuse

just stops
working

promises Xander
descended from the Greek
to defend men

who have not fallen in

place: alias: love

is my gravity

keeps me gravely moving graveward
to the hellmouthy gravity of my unreality

(and by grave I mean you)

(and by unreality I mean :

I am the open one
waiting for someone
unwilling to fall.)

—

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.

Love Lesson # 2014 from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

This message is not for me:

“Just thinking of you and hope
things will go smoother
for you and love
you.”

A slayer with family and friends wasn’t in the brochure:

“sorry, off by one digit,
please delete me”

Without a slayer, you are just pretty much watching

And without a spinster and Halloween cats,
the matchmakers are pretty much on

a rant, no room for logic:

on New Year’s Eve
someone’s mother called me

by mistake

I remembered my mother
is dead

when there was no one to make me tea
or bury me in the crypt of his body

“You can’t keep trying to make everything work
               with one big gesture

or by publishing a book of poems to distract from this: “

“Thanks,

but who is this?

Tragedy?

I am no longer in love
                                  with you.”                                      You no longer turn me on

this old mattress —

all I need:
an unbudger of support                                       I’m five by five

and know the soul is not

all about moonbeams and penny whistles: it’s about self-
                                                                                                                        loathing.

But someone I don’t know loves me.                                 I have a text that says so.

—

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.

Love Lesson #42 from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

How can water break?
Ask the cracks and potholes in the boneyard.

In the tub my body sinks to the bottom,
filled with water weight.

No matter how many tears are shed
or how much of myself I pour on you,
the memory of your saliva takes up more
than 78% of me.

Stop this Pitypalooza
At least he has a reflection

like the willows, which weep raindrops
that cannot fall, like my body of water

suspended in this body of water where I find
no reflection, just the hot baptism of my skin.

They’ll never know how hard it is to be the one
who isn’t chosen.

In another time and place, I could be a waterfall
to which, through the mist of clouds broken
by the sun, people pilgrimage to cleanse
their unstakeable selves, the self that cannot remain

in one form

like coffee beans, they hope the rush of my water
will brew them out of their shells, transform them into the essence

of something

drinkable, visible, lovable.

—

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.

Love Lesson #319 from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

If girls unnoticed
can become invisible
assassins

and cheerleaders can take down
the competition with flames

if an angel of death can fall
             in love

and if dreams aren’t prophesies

then I will believe
a werewolf you are not

                                           (Do you know why you’re alive?)

though you only once in a supermoon
make love and sleep-talk to me.

—

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.