Unholy Women

But of course these poems are about men, which we become by defining how we are not women and so becoming a shadow devouring the light to find the limits which is what Richard Pryor would have told Joan of Arc in a joke funnier for being sexist “It’s a man thang.” And of course there is God and its problematic relationship to light not to mention the question of permission Who builds the box, the shape? It makes sense that Jesus, the new man 2,000 years ago was a carpenter. You need that craft, the precision of measurement angles of angels who incidentally are never women. Just ask the Romans, who called them Angelo, Angelus never Angela— that lie was coined by a dissident nun hiding her feminism under the cover of rapture but is it enough to announce yourself? To beat your chest in contrition calling Mea culpa! Mea culpa? Guilt can never be enough Mere intent—where is its purpose? Yet there are no answers there are only lines that disappear into horizons that girder us with safety just as there is no way to end this poem.