This one is about poop!

I've had a string of good writing time lately, which will often happen when I've got something else to do that I'd rather not - like studying for the GRE. When poetry is work, I do something else to procrastinate. When something else is work - you see what I mean.


So here's something pretty recent, all comments welcome.

Bathroom Reading

Matt Quarterman

The rack by the toilet is groaning with paper,
comics and magazines, a paperback
of cheap science fiction, with catalogs
of hard succulent guitar bodies.
There is blank paper, too, sheets and reams of it
just waiting for me to leave my mark
and wordlessly look at the aftermath
before throwing it away, my work complete.


It’s hard to tell the cause and effect,
which is the source and which the waste,
nutrients and by-products, body and mind.
All I know is the repeating cycle
where one thing goes in
and another comes out.
Most of the time it’s nothing you’d miss,
just emptiness wrapped in a soft useless casing.


It’s something to do as you pass the time
waiting for whatever will happen to happen,
empty calories in, used paper out.
If any of this were that good for you
you wouldn’t be getting rid of it.
It would be held in, doing its work
of keeping the whole endeavor running
instead of passing right through you
like so much ink blotting thin paper
to run and smear the other side.


As it is, you stay in your corner
tending to your very private business
and let the process run its course.
I sit, I strain.
I read, I write.