#jo shapcott

[catilinas]

Jo Shapcott, Of Mutability

[majestativa]

What does exile taste like, my darling, what is it to know loneliness?

— Farzaneh Khojandi, My Voice: A Decade of Poems from the Poetry Translation Centre, transl. by Jo Shapcott & Narguess Farzad, (2014)

[derangedrhythms]

England. It hurts my lips to shape / the word.

Jo Shapcott, Her Book: Poems 1988-1998; from 'Motherland'

[alliwanttodoiscollectpoetry]

Jo Shapcott ~ Of Mutability

Of Mutability

[montair]

The lie is light over your heart.

You will do nothing about it.

The swallows are chattering

around the house. All night

you sweat it out waiting for a breeze

to collapse you to sleep.

Jo Shapcott, from For Summer, in Of Mutability, 2010

(2018)

[hedwiggywithit]

Muse

When I kiss you in all the folding places

of your body, you make that noise like a dog

dreaming, dreaming of the long run he makes

in answer to some jolt to his hormones,

running across landfills, running, running

by tips and shorelines from the scent of too much,

but still going with head up and snout

in the air because he loves it all

and has to get away. I have to kiss deeper

and more slowly – your neck, your inner arm,

the neat creases of your toes, the shadow

behind your knee, the white angles of your groin -

until you fall quiet because only then

can I get the damned words to come into my mouth.

- Jo Shapcott

[dykehaus]

Can the bald lie? The nature of the skin says not: it's newborn-pale, erection-tender stuff, every thought visible,—pure knowledge, mind in action—shining through the skull. I saw one, a woman, hairless absolute, cleaning. She mopped the green floor, dusted bookshelves, all cloth and concentration, Queen of the moon. You can tell, with the bald, that the air speaks to them differently, touches their heads with exquisite expression. As she danced her laundry dance with the motes, everything she ever knew skittered under her scalp. It was clear just from the texture of her head, she was about to raise her arms to the sky; I covered my ears as she prepared to sing, roar, to let the big win resonate in the little room.

Jo Shapcott; “Hairless”

[woodlandtrust]

I Go Inside the Tree - Jo Shapcott

Indoors for this ash is through the bark: notice its colour – asphalt or slate in the rain

then go inside, tasting weather in the tree rings, scoffing years of drought and storm, moving as fast as a woodworm

who finds a kick of speed for burrowing into the core, for mouthing pith and sap, until the o my god at the heart.