Armine Iknadossian: If Joan of Arc Was Still Alive

She would be sitting by the Mediterranean
at sundown, the sky as red as Campari,
knitting, or maybe sharpening her cutlery

on a large stone. She would talk to the sea,
its curling fingers of foam, its fists of water
like a woman climbing out of ash and bone.

In the evenings she would eat black olives
as she watched the sea, that burning beast.
She’d spit out each pit and examine the seeds

for clots of dried blood, tiny tumors, a set of bloody teeth.

Copyright Armine Iknadossian.
Used here by kind permission of the author.