Johanna Shapiro, PhD
When I was little I thought
women were flat-chested
like men
only they had long purple
squiggles across their chests
I thought
this way because cancer
filched both my mother’s breasts
when I
was born
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
When I was little I thought
women were flat-chested
like men
only they had long purple
squiggles across their chests
I thought
this way because cancer
filched both my mother’s breasts
when I
was born
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
Death is not my lover
– that would be morbid –
nor even my best friend
– though some say he can be that –
He is merely become
my near neighbor
having taken up residence next door
We are friendly
in a cool sort of way
Sometimes we wave
when we are pulling out from our driveways
I off to my work
he off to… his
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
Fellow oldsters, you know
what I’m talking about
When we get those fabulous,
spanking new metal and ceramic
balls and sockets
we want to protect our investment
of money, pain, blood, sweat, tears,
so we take precautions
But oldsters, think about it
Hip precautions’
How hip is that?
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
When he was three, our son
always beat me when we played
When he was five, he got mad that
he was white
and didn’t have a name
like Kareem or Magic,
a name that could soar
and slam dunk
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
I was born in West Virginia
To a family of mining men
And women widowed young
I was the only boy in that company town
To come down with polio in the summer of ’27
Two girl s got sick
But I was the only boy
It was curious.
My leg brace was a curiosity too
When I came home
From the hospital in Lexington
A year and six surgeries later
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
In appreciation of “Monet Refuses the Operation,” a poem by Lisel Mueller
Cataract surgery
under local anesthesia
means you get to watch
while they do surgery
on your eye
So you can see
(although not too well
because you’re almost blind)
as the sharp implements approach
then make contact
and the surgeon says
“Incision made” or “Lens removed”
Johanna Shapiro, Ph.D. and Deane H. Shapiro, Jr., Ph.D.
A collection of poetry, Chinese linked verse.
Becoming a patient often involves surprises which are hard to categorize, combining as they do a strange interplay of wonder and horror. When I was diagnosed with endometrial stromal sarcoma in 2004, it was a surprise not only to me, but to my surgeon as well. In “Russian Dolls,” I explore the subtle nature of these surprises through the image of nested dolls. For me, these carefully carved, brightly colored playthings evoked half-conscious associations to the womb, with its potential fecundity, awe, and mystery. In my childish mind, these unformed images were always wondrous, exotic, exciting.
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
(October, 2004)
As a child, not yet a woman
I loved those Russian dolls-within-dolls
The smooth, colorful, varnished surfaces
of that red-cheeked, flowering babushka
and (as I conceived it) her many daughters
some happy, some pensive
all safely tucked away inside the womb
of their mother.
But the one I liked best
was the last one of all
The littlest daughter
the tiny baby I claimed as my own