(after Stevens)

I saw a toilet on Prytania Street
And green it was, near the gutter.
It made the cozy shotgun houses
Surround that gutter.

The houses shrank from it,
their shuttered secrets now exposed.
The toilet, green in that Uptown scene,
was porcelain, not Port-O-Let.

It took dominion of that set.
The toilet was bare and wet.
Uncovered, unlocked, unscrubbed, it sat
Like nothing else on Prytania Street.

Ginny Kaczmarek
originally published in the online journal Umbrella
June 2009

used with permission of the poet