The Feminist Toilet #1

the shit you’ve been waiting for

an anthology of toilet///lit

Edited by Sammy Ginsberg & Brian Sonia-Wallace

“How vulnerable can you be half naked on the toilet with your pants around your ankles and just a little bit of shit hanging from your asshole. Pretty fucking vulnerable, I will tell you that.”

– On the Toilet, My Thoughts, Sammy Ginsberg, September 2012

Dear Reader,

Toilets are the ultimate feminists. Tell me one person you know that doesn’t shit. Exactly. Everyone has experiences with toilets. They are liminal spaces where society meets humanity – where we let our animal side out. I mean it’s a bit weird what happens in those sanitary sanctuaries, and yet we never talk about it. #taboopoo It’s fucking earthly in there. I think what happens in toilets is beautiful. It is the place one can be most vulnerable. It is a safe space, a private place in a public world.

Please enjoy these poems, prose pieces, essays, images, and artwork inspired by the toilet, our beloved porcelain deity.

In Toilet Love,

Sammy Ginsberg, Editor

Dear Reader,

In a world that takes itself too seriously, the toilet can be the last refuge of the silly, and therefore of the profound. My grandfather had a joke about college degrees: BS, MS, PhD. He said they stood for: Bull Shit, More Shit, and Piled Higher and Deeper. In the face of Literature, we offer only potty jokes.

And this, well, this is a wad. But it’s also a flush, a sanitary napkin, a whispered prayer. In these pages you will find poets from across the world, California to England to India. They are united by what’s inside them – poetry!

…and other things.

Look how much we all share. Everything that departs. See us flush. And keep pushing.

Brian Sonia-Wallace, Editor

In Celebration of

World Toilet Day 2020

November 19, 2020

Dedicated to you, beloved toilet.

Without you, we might have been one of the children who died from diarrhoeal diseases before they were five.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Always and forever.