Six Poems

Poetry by Stuart Watson

GLOBAL TOUR OF PLACES I HAVE PEED

Our world, is it not a restroom

waiting to be found?

Baptized in desperation,

need to pee exceeds restraint.

I have watered a bush

outside the occupied restroom

of a Shell station as cars

crawled past, in Orinda, Calif.,

smiling at the drivers

and wondering what they

were wondering, guy standing

in a bush. Needing popcorn?

Or in the snow of Central Oregon,

alongside my car, back door

open to screen my wee-wee,

from every semi and ski rack whizzing by

full of bored, voyeuristic people

thinking … More trees? Nothing but,

then “Hey, that guy is whizzing –

Mom, can I do that?”

Like me, behind mesquite

outside a Carl’s Jr., in Blythe, Calif.,

my dog (no, not that dog)

on a leash, no hindrance

to him relieving himself, too,

then looking up at me

as if to say,

I got you, Dawg.

Or in a Tucson Walgreen’s

parking lot, leaning

against a palo verde, nonchalant

as passing drivers focus

on safety, and my new

best bud, a waist-high juniper,

looks grateful for the mellow

yellow sip. Later, third-level parking

garage, two doors open

like arms in embrace,

my urgent need defiant of inbound

drivers, me so grandfatherly, any

car would want a hug. Perhaps

you too have spent some time behind

Hollywood Donuts. Portland?

Someone sleeping with the key

behind the door to the only

place nobody else can use, now,

when nature calls

me to the dumpster corral,

a rustic, symbiotic privacy.

And today, me done tossing ball for the dog,

feeling urgent to pass behind our gate,

leaking soda still as green as its last sip.

Glad, that winter day, for a downpour

and an off-ramp past the rain-fogged

Benicia-Martinez Bridge,

car still running as I hobbled

swollen behind a derelict

sign still good to shield

me from the knowing

truckers passing, each

of them thinking

Good for you, buddy,

ballsy enough to say

“fuck-it,” no empty

Pepsi jug for you,

no bullshit modesty,

just whip it out and do

what nature calls you to,

but never easy, fingers fumbling

with a balky buckle,

my own rain warm and running

too late down my leg.

CHEAP ROOM

In a paper grocery bag from the car,

you walk your worldly goods.

Side by side, you survey the scene.

You want me to sleep on that?

Rectangle of exhaustion.

Backyard pool of his and hers, dried.

A threadbare masquerade of sleep.

When did they change the sheets?

Museum of misspent lust.

Polyester blanket with a hole.

I’d rather fuck that, but finger it instead.

Somebody musta dropped a smoke.

I love the way the bed wobbles

when we get it going. Like a leg

is going to collapse us all. Leg.

Nothing on TV, but screaming

outside, duelling, a duet.

Is that car at the far end honking

its applause? Or just because

it thinks we’re stuck?

Remember how to get the dogs

apart? A bucket of cold

water. Watch them wonder

how they got here. You

in the shower, humming, me

staring at a carpet stain.

A collectible TV fills a hole

in the wall. Frizzy hair and nice

tits look back from the room

next door. You change the channel.

OUTAGE

A single match

contains a mighty fist

to take a forest down.

One flame extinguished with a bucket.

Another that replaces miles of green

with miles of black.

It’s hard to imagine, how so much darkness

lives inside a tiny stick

with a red tip.

A match is like a man’s desire, ready

at a moment’s notice

to turn mislaid hunger into ash.

A match is a sort of magician,

making things disappear, erasing a bird

by putting it into a hat.

My wife wants to light a fire.

On top of a pile of wax. A thread

will take the flame where it wants.

“Do we have matches?” she asks.

I shrug. “Use the stove.”

“How would I lift it?”

For the first time in years,

we eat in the dark. Without being seen,

the food tastes better.

BOTTOMLESS

In the big box store, I found no boxes

big or small, nor any of the famous

bottomless cups of coffee

they serve at the cafe, although I swear

those cups had bottoms in them,

because the coffee never ran out.

Nobody seemed to mind me giving

myself a sponge bath in the restroom,

coming and going mainly to use

the shitter, me minding my own shit

at the sink, shaving in the mirror

and drying my pits in the hot air blower.

Almost like an employee (I didn’t have a blue

vest, but could be as aimless as anyone),

I wandered around, carrying a box

of frosted mini wheats, which I dipped my hand

into and pulled out snacks like they were mine

as I walked until I reached the bottom.

When I got tired, I sat in my car

in the parking lot of the big box store,

with the big flag that reminded me I was here

to enjoy my freedom to sit, watch people

arrive with their many kids and park and return

with carts and cartons, arms full

of disposable items, butt wipe

and stuffed green olives, symbols and tokens

of life in the greatest country on earth

where even parking is free, like the hugs

you get at home, between the slaps, and sleep

arrives eventually, hastened by the thrum

of a refrigerator unit on the trailer

of the truck waiting to unload its load

but big enough to block the security

light that otherwise would keep me awake

because I stupidly chose this space

during the middle of the afternoon

without a single thought of what the night

would bring, or how the light was always on

until the truck arrived with its load of shade.

ANGELINA JOLIE LISTS HER LOS ANGELES ESTATE FOR $29.85 MILLION

A woman by the name of Angelina Jolie

wants to sell her house, at $150,000

less than an even $30 million. You

can write a check, buy it, move in

your dirty underwear, boxes of baseball

cards from when you were a kid

and liked bubble gum. It includes a room

full of framed and hung paparazzi photos.

Evidence of Brad Pitt? Missing.

Maybe you’ve only got enough debt

for a down payment, a cool

$6 mil or so, but either way, you can

walk those Jolie halls, stand in front

of the Jolie mirror, stare at your Jolie lips

and think of all the people who haven’t

kissed them lately, what a gift it would be

to share them with the world, walking

draped in lamé glam from your dressing

table into the party, guests assembled

and eating hors d'oeuvres, sipping bar-tended

Manhattans, here to cheer their fortune

at winning an invitation, to stand and chat

and wait, for you, the newest owner

of the house that Angelina Jolie owned,

trailing fumes of celebrity wherever she

walked, to add a damp tissue to the trash,

to stand overlooking the stone patio, gardens

lush and manicured by Mexicans, thinking

how you borrowed most of $30 million

so you could look upon it all like Angelina

Jolie, and realize you never would survey it

with the same blue eyes, same sang-froid as she.

GUNS ‘N’ ROSÉS

Sipping a spry rosé to help the salami

go down, the law professor

and his novelist wife seemed shocked

when I shot them

with disclosure that I owned

self-sought knowledge of weeds

we could eat during dinner at the end times,

safe in the knowledge

that an actual gun

lay hidden,

locked,

almost inaccessible yet resident albeit

passive defense in the having

against any history of acting on the thought

that someone else deserved to die

from their ill-advised choice

to site a bedroom

beneath a tree

afflicted with a huge branch

that hadn’t disclosed its moral rot.

My host, familiar with global tort,

caught my eye, motioned with the barrel

of the white blend toward my glass.

I shot him

a nod of approval, watching a three-way

of chardonnay, chablis, sauvignon blanc

hold hands and skip

from a distant vineyard

like shotgun pellets toward my lips.

BIO: Stuart Watson’s work as appeared in Rattle, Broadkill Review, Stanchion, and Southword. His first book of poetry, "Death is the Dismount," was released July 7, 2026.