d’Arc | Rebecca Oliver
I’ve known who Joan was for as long as I can remember;
she is in the stitching of my mothers’ memories.
Joan loved the bells,
girls her age from Domremy
(now Domremy-la-Pucelle)
told the courts this.
Joan had custom clothes
(we think she loved her clothes)
with more than twice the usual cording
as a protection from her soldiers
and later from her guards.
Joan heard angels,
she heard Catherine and Margaret
(Katherine and Maggie were in my grade),
and they were her confidants
in courts that examined her privacy.
Joan died when she was 19, because she
liked the bells, because her friends were
Katie and Marge, because she liked
looking nice, because she cut her hair.
You can still visit Joan’s house.
It’s her world, and we’re all livin’ in it,
all us girls who stop, who tilt our faces to
the sun when we hear vespers.
about the author:
Rebecca Oliver writes poems, teaches high school, and reads everything in Omaha. She also spends a lot of time begging students to join her school’s poetry club, which is tiny but mighty. She is still getting used to the Nebraska wind and trying to tame it into more poems alongside other untamable motifs like saints, teeth, and angles (yes, angles, not angels). She lives with her husband, Tony, and their orange-and-white cat, David Byrne.
4 replies on “d’Arc by Rebecca Oliver”
Wow, that was terrific. Talented
Wow! So beautiful! Joan was such a complex soul, yet you captured her with compassion, empathy, and homage. If it comes to you to restate this as a single line portrait of her, consider allowing me to restate in my favorite art form. Keep the light shining! Oma K.
Congratulations
Dear Rebecca,
A clever and wise poem–fine job of working the history into the 21st century.
Congrats and all the best,
Sam Dodson (Kate Sommer’s brother)