Johanna Shapiro, PhD
All of a sudden in my life
The news is never good
We’ve found a mass
It could be cancer
You need surgery
It is cancer
It could be fatal
Sorry, it is an orphan cancer
No one knows much about it
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
All of a sudden in my life
The news is never good
We’ve found a mass
It could be cancer
You need surgery
It is cancer
It could be fatal
Sorry, it is an orphan cancer
No one knows much about it
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
These poems were written by our daughter Johanna in Mallorca, the Ticino, and Barbados. At the start of our trip she was seven years old, when we returned she was nine.
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
WHITE HAIKU
White, white, white is the
color of snow, sugar, swans
this hospital bed
BLUE HAIKU
The patient’s eyes are
deep pools in which the doctor
can swim forever
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
When I composed this poem, I was lying flat on my back, munching anti-inflammatories and feeling sorry for myself, in the midst of an acute episode of back spasm. Having had back problems for 20 years, originally as the result of an injury, and later complicated by arthritic and auto-immune changes, I knew the drill. I couldn’t read, couldn’t use the computer, couldn’t watch tv, couldn’t work. All I could do was wait… and think. Experiencing serious back pain is unnerving, because it can strike at any moment, often without a clear precipitating event. It can be agonizing, and over time, debilitating. But it is also undignified. Rolling about on the floor, I began to think of Kafka’s short story, Metamorphosis, in which the poor clerk Gregor Samsa awakens to discover he has been transformed into a bug. Gregor suffers, but he suffers in an ungainly, humiliating way. Mostly he suffers because even his family eventually avoids him, and is relieved when he dies. Back pain sufferers can experience a similar fate. Back pain isn’t glamorous – it’s not like Camille swooning romantically with tuberculosis – and after awhile even loved ones get tired of the whining. You can be a perfectly productive and cherished member of your family one day, and an annoying parasite the next. Not a pretty thought.
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
I’ve wanted to tell you…
I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time now
Remember that day?
The day I’d got up my nerve
I wanted to talk
to talk about…
What do you call them?
Survival statistics
I wanted to know –
the odds
SCENE ONE: THE MIDWIVES
CROWD: Shiphrah, Puah! Shiphrah, Puah!
PERSON: Shiphrah? Puah? What kind of names are those? Who are they?
CROWD: Good question!
LEADER! Who are they? (Hebrew midwives)
PERSON: Why are you cheering for them?
CROWD: Who knows?
LEADER: Who knows? (Because they wouldn’t kill the first-born male children of the Hebrews)
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
It’s like getting ready for a first date
only different
Then I chose high heels
hoping for a sexy sway
Now I put on sensible shoes
to appear a person of substance
who deserves to live
Then I researched football
and other sports I knew boys liked
so I’d seem smart
but not as smart as they were
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
It would make an interesting calculation for some graduate student in English literature to figure out, since the introduction of the written word, how many poems have been written about death. Even without a definitive answer to this question, it is obvious that poetry and death have a long history together. Perhaps it is because, when nothing else is left us, when we have run out of remedies and medicines and interventions, we still have words. They offer only an imperfect resistance to the inevitability of our own annihilation, but since they are all we have, we wield them as best we may.
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
Some people are fortunate enough to know, by the time they are sixteen (or sometimes six), what it is they want to do with the rest of their lives. Their career path is set – mathematician, teacher, physician – and a direct line appears to exist between the point of aspiration and the point of achievement. For others, a process that has been described as an organic unfolding occurs – one’s abilities and inclinations lead to certain work, which in turn provides the foundation for other, related work, and in this fashion an interesting, although not always predictable, career is built. Regardless of the type of career one has evolved – whether “directed” or “organic” – it is likely that within that career there may be various shifts of emphases as new interests and challenges develop, and other aspects of work become excessively familiar and well-worn.