Excerpt from “Jerking Off” by Fiona Chamness

I cry watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer a surprising
amount. Sometimes it’s the way she builds
a family out of people just aware enough
of their own screwed-up brains to love her the way
she slowly realizes she deserves. Sometimes
it’s the constant battering ram of loss and monsters
and loss and monsters and loss. I like the way the term
insists upon a jerk. Sometimes it’s just
relief, spilling over my eyelids, at the way she kicks
and guts and stabs, a whole other kind
of off, though closer than you’d think, watching her crack
her conspiring world open, letting herself do
what she knows she’s good at: hurt back. Hurt back. Hurt back.

— December 2011 issue of PANK Magazine

(Source: pankmagazine.com)