PISS

Piss, urine, urination, the possibility of pissing everywhere, of not pissing,
urinate, and of urinating, and the possibility of urinating, of choosing to
urinate or not, of choosing where to urinate, to know not to know, to be
able to urinate, but to have the power within yourself, to have piss, where to
put urine in yourself, to have it so as to urinate it by letting it flow, to pass
it, to pass it on, where to pass it, when, to piss everywhere, to let yourself
urinate here, to simply let the urine escape in the place where you are
sitting, to let flow, in the place where you are standing, the place where you
are tucked in, where you are lying down, where you sleep, to let piss flow
onto armchairs, this ability, this precise ability, the power of spreading, and
of all the inconvenience urine can produce, for urine is inconvenient, is a
means of creating a disturbance, of disturbing, by letting at all times flow
escape urinate flow flee leak, in the place that flows, the yellow flow comes
from between the legs, extends to everything touching the crotch and flows
downward, let’s itself flow, descend, slides to the floor if there are no pants, a
jet, a flow, a runoff, a seepage, a trickle of urine, an even stream of urine, that
streams onto armchairs, wall-to-wall carpets, to piss while walking, letting
all the piss escape while walking, letting it all flow out even while walking
without stopping walking, flung by streaming by extending by spreading,
streams onto coffee tables, low armchairs, carpets, wall-to-wall carpets, low
beds, while walking, the sufficiency of the weak sufficiency of releasing, that
it releases, that it releases without knowing, that there’s no reason to know
why it has been released, that it releases unwillingly, without needing to
strain for it to release, that it can release itself and spread itself and run and
gush, the gush of yellow urine, clear yellow, transparent yellow, that disturbs
the wall-to-wall carpet, that disturbs every dampened object every piece of
furniture, and every surface, the curtains, the carpets, the sheets, the covers,
the mattress, the armchair upholstery fabrics to be able to tense up to simply
let it go between the legs, let it go in the groin, to let it make urine’s point,
the point of letting piss go, to piss on yourself, on under into the crotch if
there are tissues close at hand, to dampen the tissues, finding them damp
but damp with piss, to drag the crotch around and it flows alongside the legs
too, slides down the leg-skin and down the leg-tissue and onto the ankles and
feet, to dampen, it is dripped, this is its way prevented by the tissues not of
gushing but collapsing onto the nearest tissues and of dunking them, the most
dunked, the fact of always permanently having the ability, to have something
within yourself that lets urine gathered inside extend, guarded within yourself,
guarded, available, held, in one movement, a single breach of an event, a
single breach of nothing, a single non-gesture, absence of gesture, oversight,
forgetting it, to be forgetful.

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from Issue 12 of Changes

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Aiden Farrell is a poet and translator. His translatin of The = Sign by Christophe Tarkos is forthcoming with World Poetry, as is Vanitas, his second full-length translation of Marie de Quatrebarbes. His chapbook, control, was published in early 2026 with Sputnik & Fizzle. Aiden’s work has been supported by the Albertine Translation Fund and le Centre national du livre (CNL).


Christophe Tarkos is born in Martigues in 1963 and dies in Paris in 2004. After a degree in political science and a stint teaching economics, he dedicates himself exclusively to poetry. He makes his work known to the poetry world by practically assaulting the mailboxes of its members. He writes and performs extensively, and co-edits the journals R.R. and Poézie Proléter. In under ten years, Tarkos develops a craft and singular body of work that counts among the most influential in contemporary French poetry. He releases seventeen books between 1994 and 2001, and five volumes appear posthumously.