Joseph M. Jablonski

Certified Listener Poet,
Cohort 1 Fall 2021

Joseph M. Jablonski is a typewriting street poet in addition to being a Listener Poet of The Good Listening Project. As a street poet, he entertains as the “Walking Mall Poet” on the downtown pedestrian mall of Winchester, Virginia and beyond. In addition to being published in numerous literary journals, he has also been an artist-in-residence at the Peter Bullough Foundation and a board member at the Poetry Society of Virginia.

When not writing, Joseph works in the social care landscape, developing solutions to help connect clients to life-saving social needs, and lives with his wife and children in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.

Joseph's Poems

Language of Diagnosis

What is pain without a diagnosis? This is what occupied this patient before she even received her breast cancer diagnosis about a year ago. “I could feel the issue all the time,” she told me, and her concerns were confirmed when she finally did receive a diagnosis for her mysterious malady.

Gratitude

“I’m grateful to still be alive.” Her cancer diagnosis had given her a new perspective, allowing her to be gentler and more patient with life. She told me that she picked her battles more and was trying to be less of a people pleaser.