Jo Langdon is a writer and educator living on unceded Wadawurrung land. Her poetry collections are Snowline (Whitmore Press, 2012) and Glass Life (Five Islands Press, 2018), with Delivery published by Vagabond in 2026. She has received fellowships from the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation, the National Library of Australia and the Wheeler Centre, and her recent work is published in journals including Island, Meanjin and Overland.
In her flat in Warsaw
After an image of the artist Alina Szapocznikow
She looks at what looks,
improbably, like an iPhone. It is
1953 (thereabouts), she is
approaching the frame’s
edge: ponytail to peep-toe sequence
of sideways strokes, softer
than the tablecloth’s bars
in monochrome, ambiguous face
on the wall, onlooking—
From palm and fingertip, a
neat click of compact opening
windows—clack—within the room