Emily Corwin
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1927)
Look at your judges: drawbridge withdrawn, a morning-star for punishment.
Judas Cradle, Catherine Wheel, the rack, a tonsure-headed magistrate. Why
would he have cut his hair? Three patches of light, impressions of sun as collected
in wet across the cornea. She is feverish. She must be bled. Not within my knowledge:
neither day nor hour of my summoning, my viatacum. L’Eglise, l’eglise. Disrobed,
tonight with you in paradise. They extracted from me: one brass finger ring, a doublet,
pauldron and plackart armor. I am God’s daughter, not disgraced, never cunning.
Pucelle, pucelle. Do I know what I refuse? Symmetrical, complete: two molecules
of water against my blonde lid, perfectly distilled, almost felled.
Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
I stop inside your mirror, rigid with indecision, immoveable
either back or forward. A snow scene, in Frederiksbad.
Could there have been ice in our garden? I advance without proof,
prolonged shadows along the terraces and parquet. Before me:
some danger– my arm raised without protection,
across my negligee, charmeuse. Please, lower your voice.
A glass partition, a false exit. Last year’s hotel remembered as
solemn, immense, baroque: frieze and pomade, balustrade,
alligator purse, pillars in dolomite-black and the Chiavari chairs,
architraves gilded inside each doorway. The day you photographed me:
I look just like Delphine, my gesture of defense, enclosed within
caladium leaves–palmate in the lobby before the coachman called our ride.
Emily Corwin's work has appeared in Salamander, Black Warrior Review, Passages North, DIAGRAM, Ninth Letter, New South, and elsewhere. Her books include Marble Orchard (University of Akron Press, 2023), Sensorium (University of Akron Press, 2020), tenderling (Stalking Horse Press, 2018), and Gossamer, forthcoming from the University of Akron in 2027. She lives and works in Michigan with her husband and her very photogenic cat, Soup.