Martyr by Fire

          
          My parents had a duck phone. The phone had red eyes that lit up and a voice that 
quacked when the phone rang. The quack was just too much for me so I convinced them to turn 
off the sound. This resulted in red lighting eyes every time someone called. A light with no 
sound is a parallel image to what happens to a martyr, is a pattern for how martyr-like causes 
often play out.
          By your own resolve did you ever hold your children’s hands under hot water until they 
cried? Did your child ever express their own volition by holding their own childhood hands 
under such hot water that it scalded them, held them there until they heard the inner sounds 
begin to ring (so that they might know what it felt like to be a martyr by fire)?
          Was Jeanne d’Arc (whom I would experience regular visitations from during my whole 
life) a female version of Christ? Was she secretly generating cosmic gain by making grunting 
noises as she pulled down two opposing castle walls in an alternate lineage or history that we 
never heard about? As alternate to Christ being hoisted onto one wooden cross, was Jeanne 
d’Arc (who pulled two into a pile of one (as wholesome act)) an embodied bruise?





j/j hastain is the author of several cross-genre books including the trans-genre book libertine monk (Scrambler Press), anti-memoir a vigorous (Black Coffee Press/Eight Ball Press) and The Xyr Trilogy: a Metaphysical Romance of Experimental Realisms. j/j’s writing has most recently appeared in Caketrain, Trickhouse, The Collagist, Housefire, Bombay Gin, Aufgabe and Tarpaulin Sky. j/j has been a guest lecturer at Naropa University, University of Colorado and University of Denver.