love letters to joan of arc

i. l’amour est patient

do angels really look as they do
in my aunt’s china cabinet display?
white and male and clad in robes
it would be pretty fucking disappointing
if azazel descended as a divine frat boy
i think xe must be beautiful in an ecclesiastical way
made of teeth and eyes and good intentions, twisted
i pray we end in fire sitting in the musty hayloft
shivering in too much makeup
the way a girl braids and unbraids her hair in absent thought
is damnably lovely

ii. l’amour est bon et n’est pas envieux

her black lipstick is crooked
like she had kissed the charred embers
burning the soles of our feet
sweat turns her cut-crease to a smoky eye
she laughs too loud
let me leave my left lung in the rolling
lavender fields of provence
my right at the place where venus’s gravity falters
my heart at the foot of the pyre
we inhale cigarette-tainted air
until weak daybreak climbs

iii. l’amour n’aura pas de fin

those who romanticize small towns
have never lived in one
we thought we could swallow the sun back then
the church-group kids were too loud and bright
so we’d go around the corner to the shitty blockbuster
where the cashier was paid in crumpled bills
our painted nails scraped
the other’s sweaty palm
how can they call us the weaker sex
when monthly we are destroyed
and built again?