room with a poo

by Lou Garcia-Dolnik

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a nondescript bird
with a pantomimed accent
lauds the merits of excrement
in a children’s song both rhythmically pleasing
and adequately didactic

Humbolt penguins shoot poo 1.34 metres
out of their pinhole rectums
primarily along a horizontal path
though the compass of fecal trajectory
is diverse and manifold in the ornithoid kingdom

the guardian profiles a room with a poo
whose open planning leaves little to the imagination

that is to say
your business becomes everyone else’s business
(an undesirable asset in the deregulated rental market)

though who has not asked herself
if she could shit where she eats

if she could be loved enough to excrete
a bristol type 6 in the dwindling light
of an americano afternoon ?      //

living in tandem with your stool throws into stark relief
that proximity to poo

makes you eat differently
makes you need people                a little differently

& though i might not be inclined to play the zerosum game of low rent
versus the supposed disbenefits of a kitchen-cum-toilet

being vegan & a bad cook, i am well-acquainted with curries
stir-fries & experimental dishes that well-simulate liquid egesta

& half-hearted approximations of columnar charcuterie      //

penguins can eject their eggs
leaving its occupant a pariah
like in the hit musical comedy happy feet
which didn’t deserve a modicum of the attention it so immoderately received

( not because the hermeneutic of animated dancing penguins was ill-suited
to dissecting its purported subtexts of religious hierarchy & interracial tensions

but because it neglected to address the paramount signifier of ontological difference
between homo sapiens & spheniscidae

which is that one can shoot poop a distance over three times its standing height, and the other cannot )      //

centuries ago, physicians tasted patients’ faeces
to better judge their moral character
which i might contemplate if placed in face
of a creuset iron cast classic & other attractive utensils

my great uncle once sneezed his small intestine
through his butthole & my great-grandmother
lodged it promptly back with her thumb

having been deprived of the luxury of toilet paper most of my child life
i am proficient at being proficient at wiping
too thoroughly              resulting in all kinds of painful medical complications
with scarcely a lover tolerant enough to tolerate my medical complications     //

lorikeets come to my balcony window
eat, shit and leave           & i respect that impulse-driven decision

though wonder what particulate of evolutionary difference

endowed ornithoids
& not anthropoids

to suffer the conterminity of e-coli & salmonella
with other, non-scatological business      //

many species of hamster have been known to eat their own faeces,
hoard it in their houses & stuff the excess in their cheeks

which begs certain epistemological questions about the difference
between eating your shit & eating the shit your lover has made
in full view of you taking a shit            //

a woman once ejected her stool
out her date’s toilet window
and got stuck trying to recover it

eliciting the fire brigade to retrieve her from the dark alley
between his double-locked glass windows, and that of his neighbour

so it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man
in possession of a blocked toilet
might best reap the benefits of netflix and chilling,
his prospective mate forever obliged to palliate
the shame of getting stuck between his window in pursuit
of a freshly-produced shit by entering
into long and protracted friendship
that likely only serves the guy too lazy
to unblock his toilet in advance of a date      //

& while the room with a poo might threaten the dignity of some
under late-corporate-capitalist standards of hygiene

i am a poor poet acquainted enough with the matters of my faeces
to undertake my woolfian sojourn with a view
to screening potential marriageable prospects:

invite lovers to sit awhile in my kitchen-cum-toilet
with a tick-box questionnaire purposed to determine
if their stool is tall, dark & handsome

winking at my lover suggestively as she straddles the bowl in question,
inspect the contents with a knowledgeable eye

on one knee, croon into her supplicant ear

i do baby

i do do for you

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Lou Garcia-Dolnik is a poet working on unceded Gadigal land. A poetry editor for Voiceworks and alumnus of the Banff Centre's Emerging Writers Intensive, their work has been shortlisted in the 2020 Blake Poetry Prize, awarded third place in PRISM International's Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize and second place in Overland's Judith Wright Poetry Prize. They have work published in or forthcoming with Australian Poetry Journal, Overland, Un Magazine, PRISM International, Rabbit Poetry Journal, Scum Mag and Voiceworks. They are a 2020 Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow.

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The LIMINAL Taste series is supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants Program.

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