BY FOX FRAZIER-FOLEY
St. Joan of Arc Was Sentenced to Death by Burning Alive Because, After Being Thrown into a Men's Prison, She Chose to Wear Men's Clothing in Order to Protect Herself from Further Sexual Assault
my final earthly night revealed to me
in sleep: singular opal steed ascending
If the voice and its light came to find me in my father’s garden, while I was not in fast
then I belong to God.
winging by fiery night my
equine shapethroughsky
to safeguard myclinging known & sworded
hero (sleep) (sleep) (sleep)
If the lighted voice elects to wake me
without touch: only in rhapsodic psalm
by fistfuls of my back he scattered
earthward (chimerical visage alchemical slices lionsnake goat)
pinioned himself with blade(man man man) spiralled off
If I am imprisoned at Castle Rouen where the English king permits
his guards abuse me and torment me, then I am unlike other women and I am yes all
I brought to my Father's house one thunder
my feathered wingéd beat
& as His thanks, He birthed me through starry torrent heaven-borne
If three hundred knights come bearing fifty torches, my leap
from this tower will not fail what is to succeed
immutable awakened dragged to pyre pastuglier tattered parts
If I am not in God’s grace, then may God put me there
doused my clothing, drowsed my eyes & I climbing
and if I am in God’s grace, then may God so keep me
skyward delivered
St. Hildegonde, Daughter of a Medieval German Knight, Was Disguised as a Boy by Her Widowed Father for Her Own Protection from the Age of Twelve Years, and Called Joseph Until Her Death at the Age of Eighteen Years
Lowered my mother into the earth like a halved
cask seeking water from tunneled stone Removed
my girlish hood Cut me a cap of hair Knighted
by shearing blade: I dreamed twists of gold, as in
noble mane. Named me
for a father's love: my father's quick
panic fastened me inside a boot-
linked tunic Leather pressing mid-calf, new-known
freedom of linen hosen Our many-colored coat
of arms became me Shielded by green horse Born
boy by his furrowed brow. My father gasped
his last & left me: new-toothed,
spiked orpine on our lonely
voyage home. Was I not lucky
to find myself beaten robbed left for dead
as a man might. Not taken
in mud. Not sold in a crowd. When I grasped
a hot iron bubbled my own skin waxen igniting
like fraxinella draught to show myself
no criminal was I not lucky to know
God’s love: charred & scaled wyvern-like
to wholeness Red
& gold flaking from my palm
like tiny leaves of sin
Unmarked by men for men. Was I not
fortunate when a robber’s
friends noosed me: flaring
my legs in the air helpless as a John breaking
the rope that strangled me blessed
improbable hands fibers flaking beneath my nails as little dragon leaves Some man
sent late to cut me downbecause this
is how stories that frightened
god-fearing men are penned
with curling flourish leafed in gold what pages
cast the glow of promised Truth theycome
onlyafter loneliness bare-knuckled panting
dimming candles within stygian cathedral they come
seeking absolution with stained
& glassy souls
Fox Frazier-Foley is author of two prize-winning books of poetry, Exodus in X Minor (Sundress Publications, 2014) and The Hydromantic Histories (Bright Hill Press, 2015). Her newest collection, Like Ash in the Air After Something Has Burned, is forthcoming from Hyacinth Girl Press in early 2017. Fox has edited two anthologies, Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity (Sundress Publications, 2016), and Among Margins: Critical and Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics (Ricochet Editions, 2016). She created and manages the micro-press Agape Editions, which is dedicated to publishing literary works that engage with concepts of the mystical, ecstatic, interfaith/intercultural, and the Numinous. Fox was graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Binghamton University, was honored with merit-based fellowships at Columbia University, where she earned an MFA, and was a Provost's Fellow at the University of Southern California, where she earned a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing.