Love in the Time of Sunnydale
                                                      -for Steven

My love for you is like Buffy dusting
another vampire with her favorite stake,
Mr. Pointy. Or it’s like Buffy beheading
one more demon, sword slicing some evil
lackey with a relentless arc, stopping
or at least stalling the nefarious dealings
meant undo her. That’s love in action:
sharpening sticks for battle, frying the undead
with holy water all while punning
and finishing first year psychology
late into the night. Taking down a secret
government op with its brilliant leader
and Frankenstein creation who is only undone
by a combination of magic and guile conjured
under less than ideal the circumstances—
a hostile take-over of the whole world
by demons. This is one difficult life: apocalypse,
apocalypse, apocalypse. My love for you eats
them for breakfast all while wearing stylish
but affordable boots while battling the Bringers,
harbingers of the first evil, acolytes of the worst
of the worst with their eyes stitched shut,
two crisscrossed x’s like kisses.

*

Michael J Carter is a poet and clinical social worker. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College he holds an MFA from Vermont College and an MSW from Smith. Poems of his have appeared in such journals as Boulevard, Ploughshares, MomEgg Review, Western Humanities Review, among many others. He spends his time walking his hounds and knitting.