November 9, 2026 by John Stanizzi

Bed Wetting

It was like some overdeveloped sense
that allowed her to pick up my sniveling
no matter how quiet I tried to be.

I wasn’t crying because
I had wet the bed again,
I was crying because
I knew she would hear me
and know.

She’d enter in a rage
pull me from my bed
toss me against the toilet
and hiss
Pee right now you little son of a bitch!

But I couldn’t.
I already had.
So there was a standoff,
until I fell asleep standing up.

She’d slap my face awake,
toss me on my bed
and mumble You little bastard.

For the longest time
I thought it was my fault.

John Stanizzi

John L. Stanizzi is the author of Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits, Chants, Sundowning, POND, The Tree That Lights The Way Home, Feathers and Bones. Viper Brain, and SEE. John’s 15th collection, Entra La Notte, will be out by ImspiredPress, Lincolnshite, U.K. in November 2025.

Besides Discretionary Love, Johnnie’s poems can be found in Prairie Schooner, Cortland Review, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Tar River Review, PoetLore, Paterson Literary Review, and many others. His nonfiction has been published in Literature and Belief, Stone Coast Review, Ovunque Siamo, and others. His poems have appeared widely in Italy with profound gratitude to his translator, and dear friend, Angela D’ambra.

Johnnie has read at venues all over New England, including the Mystic Arts Café, the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, Hartford Stage, the Riverwood Poetry Series, and many others. He also coordinated the Fresh Voices Poetry Competition for Young Poets at Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, Connecticut for 10 years, and spent a decade with Poetry Out Loud as a “Teaching Artist.”

A former Wesleyan University Etherington Scholar, Johnnie was the New England Poet of the Year, Poet-in-Residence at Manchester Community College and in Middletown Connecticut. He was First Prize winner in Ekphrastic Poetry Review’s Ekphrastic Marathon, and in 2021 he was the recipient of a Fellowship in Creative Writing – Non Fiction awarded by the CT. Department of Arts, Culture, and Diversity. He also just received another Pushcart Nomination, a nomination for Best of the Net, and is in the running for State of Connecticut Poet Laureate. His CNF piece Pants was named by its publisher, Potato Soup Journal, “Best of 2022.”

John taught literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, Connecticut, for 26 years, high school English and theater at Bacon Academy in Colchester, CT. for 24 years, Johnnie lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry, CT.

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