"Unexpected" 
Examined Life Journal
​Issue 5.2, Spring 2017
(posted with permission)


​Unexpected 
 
They wheeled my mother
 
            to the table under the lights,
                       
                        sliced her open only to find,
 
in her womb,
 
            a furled girl
 
                        the size of a plum,
 
translucent eyelids
 
            too fragile to block
 
                        the blinding white.
 
The doctors pinched
           
            my mother’s flaps of skin
 
together, stitched a hasty row
 
of x’s, washed their hands
 
            of it all, left
 
                        me to swirl
 
in the murky sac,
 
            heartbeat as faint
 
                        as a foxglove’s bell.

LINKS to ONLINE POEMS

"Musician's Focal Dystonia"
JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association
May 16, 2017

"Bodies Revealed Exhibition"
Intima
Fall 2018static1.squarespace.com/static/54bc1287e4b09cb81d8d8439/t/5bccb6629140b756452345cc/1540142691463/Bodies+Revealed+Exhibition+Joanna+White+FALL+2018+INTIMA+POEM.pdf

"Pockets" and "Bones"
Sheila-Na-Gig
March 2020
​
"Two-Way Mirror"
West Texas Literary Review 2018

"What to Do About Winter (Broadside: art by Katie Nealis)
The Michigan Poet

"To the Story Girl" 
"Duet"
Dunes Review 2017

"Musician's Focal Dystonia Letters"
Hospital Drive 2017

"The Nacirema"
Intima, Fall 2015

"Masks"
KYSO Flash
Winter 2015



Link to Interview with Joanna White
Brilliant Books in  conjunction with Dunes Review


​