Hail Holy Queen

Lace always made my skin itch

and I’d imagine the layers of me flaking off

into the night to fall from the sky bringing

Christmas morning no matter the season.

My blood is the First Noel.

My flesh is the Second Coming

whipped up from the ashes of a dying savior or

already dead palm.

I’ll never know whose sins are wiped across my

forehead and recited in boiled scripture through

tainted lips.

Oh, and here is my body which will be given up for you

as clammy fists trundle through my trap doors and barbed wire.

Oh, here is my blood which will be given up for the anthills

in front of my childhood home bonded to the sidewalk of sultry

suburban crucifixes in the mouth of a mother who had her devotion

and planted it in the backyard

then marked it with a birdbath and some Crayola markers.

My church will never rot, oh, but my faith was already spoiled when

Christ licked my pussy and swallowed me whole then left me in the

back pew with two black eyes and a crushed Communion wafer.