Joanne Jagoda

My unexpected writing trajectory began when I retired and by chance took an excellent writing workshop. Though I got a late start, my prize-winning short stories, poetry and creative nonfiction appear on-line and in numerous print anthologies including Persimmon Tree, Quillkeeper's Press, Viewless Wings, many Pure Slush publications, The Write Launch, Red Noise Collective, RavensPerch, Thirty West, Better After Fifty, Poetica, The Awakenings Review, Dreamers Magazine, Passager, A Poet’s Siddur among others. I’m proud of my three Pushcart Prize nominations and have won a number of contests such as first place in the Gemini Open Poetry contest. My first book of poetry, My Runaway Hourglass, Seventy Poems Celebrating Seventy Years, (Poetica Publications, 2020) was published during the pandemic. Writing helped me weather my breast cancer diagnosis and my husband's serious illness. I continue taking a variety of local and national writing workshops and have worked with several notable Bay Area poets. I enjoy spoiling my seven grandchildren whenever I get the chance.

“One More Time,” “Hurly Burly California-Fall, 2020,” and “Coming to Terms”

Hold me in your arms just one more time.
Let me feel you surround me.
Let me feel your embrace.
Your solidness, your security, ever my touchstone.

“The Sky a Flawless Blue,” “When your Muse has Left the Building,” and “My Own Little Beast”

The sky, a flawless blue,
the kind of California day,
that gets under your skin.
Scaffolds holding up the heavens
stretching against celestial infinity.
Is there a placeholder for me
in that expanse?

“Basking” “My Valentine’s Day,” and “Indian Summer Twilight from my Balcony”

basking in the words
of a poem set aside, long forgotten
the warm glow of verses once familiar
comfort like a soothing bath
taking you back
to another time and place

“Easy to Forget,” “Sometimes,” and “the other road”

It’s really easy to forget
To put it all out of your mind
That you might be living with a debt which could be called in
Any time by that unforgiving debt collector

Broken

My husband’s triple bypass surgery had gone well, and his recovery was uneventful, but ten days later, during the night he woke me up and told me he was having trouble breathing. After a sleepless night, I drove him to the emergency room, at 5 A.M. His newly patched heart checked out, but the doctors admitted him…

“The Tale of a Fat Ugly Crow on a May Afternoon,” “Found,” and “It Began with an Ordinary Tuesday”

In front of my living room window,
on a splendid May afternoon, warm and sunny,
a fat crow rapturously caws over its good fortune.
I watch in morbid fascination
as it tears apart a rodent.
Can’t fault the crow, a natural predator.

“No Elegy for Jasper,” “A Day at the Wharf” and “The Giraffe Mural on Harrison St.”

There will be no words,
no tributes, sonnets or verses of consolation,
borrowed from the great poets or philosophers
for an angel called up too soon.
Only the cries of infinite mourning rambles will reach the heavens.

2020 Was the Year

2020 was the year we will always remember but not with photos or mementos. It will be forever marked by pages left blank in photo albums and online collections which used to chronicle our most important life cycle events and the mundane ones as well.
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