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Piss Flower
by Jo Shapcott
Piss Flower - Jo Shapcott
I discovered a little cul-de-sac of literature which is devoted to the art of peeing. Most of it's written by men and most of it celebrates that marvellous golden arc that they can perform in the sky which of course I can't - so I felt a bit left out and if you like this is a kind of "me too" poem and it's called 'Piss Flower'.
Piss Flower
I can’t pretend to a golden parabola,
or to the downing of many pints
for making magnificent water.
I can’t begin to write my name, no
not even my pet name, in the snow:
except in pointless unreadable script.
But I can print a stream of bubbles
into water with a velocity
you’d have to call aesthetic.
I can shoot down a jet stream
so intense my body rises
a full forty feet and floats
on a bubble stem of grace
for just a few seconds
up there in the urban air.
uncollected poem © Jo Shapcott 2018, used by permission of the author.