JENNIFER FINSTROM

Joan of Arc in Bronze

“Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.”
  – “One Art,” Elizabeth Bishop

 
You look around the galleries for 
the bronze bust of Joan of Arc,
her up-tilted head crowned with leaves,
that you’re sure is just past Monet’s
water lilies and stacks of wheat,
look as well for the Greek funerary 
vessel depicting the apotheosis 
of Hercules and can find neither 
of them. But instead of checking 
online or asking someone, you prefer
to come to terms with the fact that not
everything needs to be accounted for,
are trying to follow Elizabeth Bishop’s
advice and don’t call the diner on Belmont 
where you left your ring with the reddish 
stone, not even noticing that it wasn’t 
on your finger until you were on 
the train again with your date, 
don’t even consider asking any of the men 
you are meeting why they appear 
and vanish with equal rapidity. 
You imagine how thirteen-year-old 
Joan must have felt hearing voices 
in the farmyard. Something immense 
suddenly speaks to you and then is silent.

Jen Finstrom is both part-time faculty and staff at DePaul University. She was the poetry editor of Eclectica Magazine for thirteen years, and recent publications include Gingerbread House Literary Magazine, Red Eft Review, and Thimble, with work forthcoming in Dime Show Review, Eunoia Review, and Rust + Moth. Her work also appears in several Silver Birch Press anthologies.