This Is about Angels, Women, and Men

This is about Angels, Women, and Men both separates women and men from the angels, and suggests they are one and the same. In sections titled Brothers, Sisters, Consorts, Offspring, and Refuse, Chantel Lavoie argues that the familial can be more foreign than familiar. These relationships rooted in blood and bone, sex, and the longing for God, split our lives apart. They break us and they make us whole. The crown of sonnets with which the collection ends -- "The Waste Poems"-- addresses uncomfortable truths about our shared humanity, and what happens when we deny that common ground.