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.