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I’m J. C. Todd. I am a poet from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

Recently I’ve had the great fortune to travel a bit beyond my own country, and it’s opened my eyes a lot and changed my poetry somewhat in that now I think I’m bringing  more awareness of history, and the place of history, recent and classical, in my verse. 

I’m going to read a poem that in a way might be characteristic. It’s called Pissing*, and it draws off my deep interest and belief in the body as really the source of poetry, but also as the element through which humans transform.

* From 5 A.M.  1:1, 1986. ed. Ed Ochester, Red Pagoda Press, czury@aol.com, 2002

Pissing

Knees bent, you tip your pelvis slightly
toward the immaculate bowl
and with the same hand that stroked me last night
extend from its sheath the pink bud of your penis.
For a minute, I think of Narcissus
looking at Narcissus, his vision forever grounded
on the shallows of that glance.
But there is no limit like self-love in your act,
only those always gentle fingers
on your penis and the golden piss
arcing from your body what it does not need.
I lean against the door jamb
breathing in the scent of your beautiful excess.
Your hand slides back to the taut perineum
pushing up until the last drop falls.
Urine of the gods.
I say this knowing you are not Uranus,
not Jupiter Pluvius, certainly not a shaman
making water on my naked body in order to charm the rain.
You are clearly not, as Freud would rush to note,
a girl with a garden hose snaked between her legs.
No, you are the man Paul was too blind to be,
flesh filled with light: atoms pulsing, nuclei of cells,
neurons, dendrites, retes--all light transmitting light.
My golden husband pissing in a porcelain bowl.

“Pissing”, copyright 1986 by J.C. Todd, from 5 A.M., ed. Ed Ochester. Reprinted by permission of the author.

J. C. Todd.  Poet. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.  M.F.A., Warren Wilson College. Ms. Todd authored two collections of poetry, Nightshade and Entering Pisces, as well as publishing in numerous literary journals. She is the recipient of a Leeway Award for Poetry, a Fellowship in Poetry and grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She has been a fellow in poetry at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the Hambidge Center.