Joanne Jagoda is a longtime resident of the Oakland hills. After retiring in 2009, one inspiring workshop, Lakeshore Writers, launched Joanne on an unexpected writing trajectory. Her short stories, poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared on-line and in numerous print anthologies including, The Write Launch, Burningword Literary Journal, Third Harvest, Snapdragon, A Journal of Art and Healing, Quillkeepers Press, The Awakenings Review, The Deronda Review, Dreamers Magazine, Passager, Better After 50, and Still You, Poems of Illness and Healing. Joanne received a Pushcart Prize nomination and has won a number of contests including first place in the 2022 Gemini Open contest. She continues taking Bay Area writing workshops enjoys Zumba on-zoom, and spoiling her seven grandchildren who call her Savta. Joanne’s first book of poetry My Runaway Hourglass, conceived while she was home sheltering-in-place, was published in summer of 2020 (Poetica Publications).
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… Read more.
“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. Read more.
“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. Read more.
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. Read more.