Joan the Revolutionary
Klara Pokrzywa
Well if i could i would lie down on the warm pavement in the sun press my tongue to the dirt. I am Joan the
revolutionary in an angelic haze. I am Joan the sobbing child who sleeps four hours in every forty eight. or—I am
Joan the standard bearer. or—it’s 1431, worst fucking spring break ever
As so it happened that in the worst season of my life I was abandoned
cast out of gods heavenly school for martyrs / in disgrace
now everything’s whittling my littlest wants down littler
to think like Sarah i laughed when God came !
i laughed at the impossibility i / laughed at the transformation of my body
then turned my prayers to swords,
danced gleefully / who wants to be happy?
Well I believed in God in the father / the Lord the giver of life
Well I was a televised geometry of destruction
roaring down the Lord’s good highway; a delight!
Half my head hardwired into heaven’s ontology—I
dwelled on nothing, preoccupied myself with ornamentation
as God gave me permission to decorate the house of my body
as I saw fit
which I did, because furthermore I was a child
otherwise known as a philosopher of urgency Well
so it happened that my holy surface was hyper-linked, was armor-clad
as perhaps I was enamored with the age of heroism to which I belonged
I never picked at my scabs, but constantly
dreamed of death’s sympathetic audience
oh Joan we love you get up
each battle a rehearsal for some final theatre, some redemption arc
Furthermore I thought my annihilation would be ecstatic
an empty landscape painting by God
or in some other way full of what I was lacking which is to say
I thought it would smooth my edges into an organic and involuble curvature
a line of seamless code
But in the end it is Joan the heart-eyed insomniac teenager:
the fact of my death will make me / the fact of my death / will make me not
no one to say oh joan you are God’s perfect martyr and this is a crying shame. no rescue mission coming round the
corner—oh but you did laugh—no god-swing coming to scoop me up.