Joan

In four volumes, Dexter ruminates on the intersections between womanhood, motherhood, and military service with focused thoughts on strength in femininity, domestic violence, and intergenerational trauma. Her style is spare and halting, conjuring intense scenes and striking imagery with cynical grace. Her poems taste of hard liquor and cigarettes, of loneliness and intimate hunger, of tears shed and love betrayed. JOAN is a collection that begins at identity fracture, suffers domestic catastrophe, picks up the pieces through self-reflection, and ultimately arrives at self-reclamation and resilience. JOAN is not the idealized saintly figure of purity and virtue captured in stained glass - she is the real, raw, and unapologetic warrior burning at the stake of her own convictions.