Two poems by Michaela Mayer

After My Appendectomy, I Think About Amber Benson’s Role in Buffy: A Golden Shovel

fingers of light trace below where the blinds break: morning is leaking through, and she still a part of me, though the dreams are fraying into nothing. a woman who awakened something, who lay curled in my unconscious: i wore her blessing like a shawl, wrapped it tenderly around my shoulders, the edges brushing my skin. its scent of sandalwood, of softness, a dream i cannot reach. her touch lingers. it sings through inexperience and the haze of hospital drugs: it traces my outline, makes me more than my post-surgery self, a girl still unaware of the languor that spills, fire-shotted, through the blood which runs in a woman sure of herself. through my delirium, it comes to me, my queerness, with a quiet and softness i will forget in an hour. i must hold it tenderly, must not crush its wings in my clumsy palm, the weight of my grasp. my scarf flutters against me. the woman stirs. down the outline of my body, on the bed, sunlight stripes my form and warms my face.

Afterimage

Start at the turn. Start with the bluegrey drone of rain on rafters, the hay smell lifting tawny on shafts of dusty air. Tell us of the horses, how they stood tall and honed against board-and-batten walls. Unconscious of the impending end. Start at the end, when the barn had burned despite the wet sky, guttering its glow like a giant torch winnowed by wind— tell us of the horses, how their dark silhouettes fled into night, the sound of hooves clopping into sightless black. End at the beginning, before embers spiraled in the air, before it burned, before the thought of barns rouged the city’s dreams.

Michaela Mayer is a 28-year-old poet residing in North Carolina. Her works have previously appeared in Barren Magazine, Feral Poetry, Olit, Monstering Mag, The Lumiere Review, and others. She has a chapbook out with Fahmidan & Co. Publishing and two cats, Sappho and Sonnet. You can find her on Instagram @mswannmayer55 and Bluesky at eurydicespeaks.bsky.social.