☀ Today's Poem: "Ode to Pissing" Rob Macaisa Colgate

Today's Headline: "Mayor Wu Announces Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah as Boston’s Next Poet Laureate"

April 22, 2025 Ode to Pissing Rob Macaisa Colgate Gender-Neutral Bathroom Ode to Pissing I go over to Lorraine’s on Thursdays to lift her onto the toilet. The vinyl sling creaks, sings, and for a moment, above her powerchair, she levitates, which is usually magical, but today she is only pissing. • There is supposed to be something magical about pissing. All these extra- vagant necessities: the frescoed ceiling as shelter, or singing and syrups when we are forced to eat. There must be some melodrama left for excretion. • I put on Melodrama and lift the toilet seat to piss while the shower warms up. Outside the bathroom, Eli flickers the lights on and off, a homemade strobe, just a miniature rave for you, darling, and I listen to him sing. • The song of piss on porcelain. Lorraine and I talk dreams of bathhouse raves, disabled teachers, careers in porn. I ask how she became so comfortable with friends wiping her and she shrugs, lifts her shoulders, checks if she’s done. • Juliana and I squeeze shoulder to shoulder into the stall at Woody’s. The muffled singing, our laughable sweat, go piss girl, and I lift the gloss to her lips while she sits there, every stickiness part of the night’s piss-drunk ritual. • Last year, in the bathroom of the library stacks, a boy whom I had never seen piss lifted my shirt, sang his tongue down my torso, and I think of my silence, all of the disordered words that I never put in concert for him. • We sing along from the concert bathroom, Clay draining his catheter of piss, Sarah emptying her ostomy bag. We joke that this is what disabled people do in stalls instead of coke, then Helen lifts a baggie, asks if we want any coke. • How Eli has to lift himself onto his toes to kiss me, how the kissing frees my tongue of sensemaking, and before any more touching: I have to piss first I’m so sorry. He grins, runs off while I queue up a song about flashing lights. • AWOLing the night out, I lift myself across the city, run after words that won’t walk home together. Home in the bathroom, I curl on the tile’s cold song, schizophasia babbling like piss around a drain that will not clear. • I think that cold part of my body that is supposed to produce shame is disabled too. I lift my eyebrows, nod, wind toilet paper around my hand like a song on loop. Lorraine clarifies: I’m not just some incontinent woman. I’m a bitch who shits. • Unclear when Eli found me, only that he did, only that he lifted my body from the piss-stained floor, the Seroquel to my mouth, and in bed he sings the lullaby out of order so I might understand the words. • And Lorraine tries to lift from me the shame that, for her, has lulled. Her question: What moment made you realize you could piss in front of Eli? My quiet shock. When I couldn’t speak straight, he suggested I sing. from the book HARDLY CREATURES / Tin House READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM Share Tweet Forward For months, I couldn't stop noticing instances of lifting everywhere. There is a care inherent to the motion, an intentionality in fighting gravity, however minor. Or: it seemed no lifting was accidental, and so I knew these liftings' confluence could not be accidental either. During this same era, I was doing a lot of social pissing. That short, sharp, assonant "i" in both words— it only made sense for them to go together. Rob Macaisa Colgate on "Ode to Pissing" Celebrate National Poetry Month with Our Readers "There is so much to love about Brenda Cárdenas’ poem Tranquilo. I don’t know Spanish, but I don’t need to. When I read the title I immediately think of tranquility, peace. The first line grabs me with its images. I picture the orange glow of the sunset highlighted by tiny glowing fireflies. I hear the soothing sounds of crickets. The soft alliteration of sunflowers, spill, sleepy, and seeds sounds like someone saying, 'Sh, go to sleep.' The writer acknowledges the subject’s suffering then ends the poem on a positive note. Feast. We will all die, so release your pain and savor life. And paint/with me this elusive magenta morning. A new day has come. We don’t know what it will entail, but there’s a beautiful sunrise. Let’s enjoy the day and forget about yesterday’s troubles." Karen Admussen READERS WRITE BACK "Mayor Wu Announces Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah as Boston’s Next Poet Laureate" "For Oppong-Yeboah, working with young people in the city where they were raised is especially meaningful and a source of personal joy. They hope to use this role to bring people together to build connections and provide resources to support poets and the organizations that make space for them." viaCITY OF BOSTON READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES donate View in browser You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com. If you would like to unsubscribe please click here. © 2025 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030 Design by the Binding Agency

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