ManicDDaily

Woman Needing To.... (image by Diana Barco)

The below poem is posted as part of dVerse Poets Pub, Saturday Poetics prompt, hosted today by Kellie Elmore. The prompt was for a poem that is provocative or deals with a subject that’s taboo.  As a (believe it or not!) slightly shy person, I find it very hard to post something both new and taboo, so am posting an older poem (one, that I’ve had time to get used to.)

A Woman Needing to Pee

A woman needing to pee,
she steps into the sea, knees
salt, a piercing balm, her
shaved legs grimace, gasp
cold, still she strolls thighward,
as far as she is able, needing to pee,
squats needing to hide it,
rubs water over her arms to hide it better,
acting out a woman too timid
to go out far, a woman
needing to cool herself.  But
she craves warmth and secretes it,
a secret warmth, wet-warming
all the sea.

Stretching tall
and cold now only where air
licks skin, she dives
into the afterglow,
a woman who swims.

A little background:  the poem was originally written as part of a “magnetic poetry exercise,” a kind of arbitrary but freeing exercise.  It can be found in my first book of poetry, Going on Somewhere, poems by Karin Gustafson, pictures by Diana Barco, cover by Jason Martin.  Check it out!

(PS – the new header above is from the cover of Going on Somewhere,  by Jason Martin.)