Hello Monday! I declare this week to be bodily fluids week, as I finally started reading Charlotte Roche’s much-discussed Wetlands over the weekend, and it’s filled my head with all kinds of secretions, seepages and discharges. I’ll get a full review up soon – but know that it is brilliant. In the mean time, here’s a suitably moist Monday Poem from English poet Hugo Williams:
Toilet
I wonder will I speak to the girl
sitting opposite me on this train.
I wonder will my mouth open and say,
‘Are you going all the way
to Newcastle?’ or ‘Can I get you a coffee?’
Or will it simply go ‘aaaaah’
as if it had a mind of its own?
Half closing eggshell blue eyes,
she runs her hand through her hair
so that it clings to the carriage cloth;
then slowly frees itself.
She finds a brush and her long fair hair
flies back and forth like an African fly-whisk,
making me feel dizzy.
Suddenly, without warning,
she packs it all away in a rubber band
because I have forgotten to look out
the window for a moment.
A coffee is granted permission
to pass between her lips
and does so eagerly, without fuss.
A tunnel finds us looking out the window
into one another’s eyes. She leaves her seat,
but I know that she likes me
because the light saying ‘TOILET’
has come on, a sign that she is lifting
her skirt, taking down her pants
and peeing all over my face.
Hugo Williams was born in 1942 in Windsor and grew up in Sussex. He was educated at Eton College and worked on the London Magazine from 1961 to 1970. His Collected Poems was published in 2002. His most recent poetry collection is Dear Room (2006), shortlisted for the 2006 Costa Poetry Award.
If you’ve got a suggestion for Monday’s dirty poem, don’t hesitate to get in touch…
