Jo Bratten

the poet
Jo Bratten writes and teaches in London, but was raised off-grid on a farm in Ohio’s rust belt. She moved to the UK to study at the University of St Andrews, where she completed a PhD on the modern novel. Her poetry has appeared in Ambit, Butcher’s Dog, The Interpreter's House, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Ink Sweat & Tears and elsewhere. Jo is working on both her first pamphlet, and a novel about cicadas.
the poems
Sunset Over Watford
I am not terribly good at love. Yet
I begin to think I could be, if love
is loving small things: the moment when
the second magpie lurches across the path;
or the girl in the purple coat running
towards the dog she doesn’t know; old men
on the bench with sandwiches in the rain;
the back of your neck; breathing you in quick,
thick gulps, like cold water after bedtime;
the smell of dying daffodils that still
strain to hold their heads bravely towards
the February sun as it sets over
Uxbridge, Ruislip, Pinner, Hatch End, Watford –
all bright and glittering in the smoky air.

Amulet
In these times we tighten, fasten locks
like lips, stockpile pills, believe
​
our own haptic power to summon
the fever-gods, draw blood to rub
​
across the lintel, into apotropaic
scratches cut into doors and walls.
​
You touch me like a mezuzah, hang me
by your heart, an omamori, a scapular,
​
a locketed caul; hold me on your lips
a cicada of jade, in your pocket like
​
a hare’s foot, a whelk’s shell; I circle
you like hag stones, word you a breverl:
​
the skies are quieter, clean; a blackbird
pauses, tilts her head, builds a nest.

After Us
When the floods clear what will be left, washed up
at our gate or lodged between the polite
​
paving stones along our tree-lined road?
Other people’s newspapers, bags for life,
​
little rusted badges with an old slogan,
lost socks and dreams, righteous anger bloated
​
like a dead rat, effluent thoughts and prayers
sludged blackly across our doormat’s smiling
​
welcome; bits of ourselves we’d cut away
and scattered in the river as fish food
​
stuck now on the stern brick of our house,
obscene in their pinkness, puckered
​
like little sucking mouths, trying to get
back in where it is so warm and so dry.
Publishing credits
​
Sunset Over Watford: Ambit
Amulet: The Mechanics’ Institute Review
After Us: Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal