The Awakening to the Reality of Water

The word “flush” is a verb, as in an activity that we do umpteen times a day. It’s also an adjective that conveys abundance. Fittingly, Rita Wong’s poem “flush” offers a praise song to water’s expansive and unceasing presence in our lives — from our toilets to our teacups, from inside our bodies to outside our buildings, and from our soil to our skies. 

Rita Wong is the author of several poetry collections, including monkeypuzzle (Press Gang, 1998), forage (Nightwood Editions, 2007), and undercurrent (Nightwood Editions, 2015). Wong is an associate professor at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Rita Wong’s poem, and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.