From the breakout author of White Origami and Some Latitudes, Fistful of Bokeh, and Chronicler's Collected Poems comes a bold and electrifying new poetry collection that dissects memory, intimacy, and the rituals of self-discovery.

In All the Washrooms in Washington Where We Got Naked, Emmanuel Odekunle transforms the washroom into a space of raw confession, fragmented identity, and fleeting absolution. These poems swell with feverish imagery, tracing the echoes of love, loss, and the weight of bodies colliding under flickering lights.

“Tell the guitarist to omit the G-string,

tell me how I can mend back my broken figure

with songs about my country, with songs for songless nations,

when they wrap up bodies that have lost the music

in them in tight body bags—

is it so they won’t lose the hums they were taught not to sing?”

With a style both avant-garde and deeply emotive, Odekunle explores what it means to be undone—by music, by desire, by the unrelenting pull of gravity. Each poem is an act of surrender, a moment caught between cleansing and chaos, drowning and rebirth.

If you have ever stood before a shattered mirror and searched for yourself in its broken reflections, this book is for you.

Praise for the book

Reading All the Washrooms in Washington is like stepping into a dream where the mundane transforms into the extraordinary. Emmanuel Odekunle is a poet who does not simply write—he reconstructs reality, turning everyday objects into mirrors of deeper truths. A washroom is no longer just a washroom; it is a place of memory, ritual, and reckoning. "I have a wrench and a screw of everything; I will transform when I enter the restroom." This book will change you.

Carlos Williams, Author of Dancing with Ugly Angels

To call Odekunle’s work excellent poetry is not enough. His poetry is an experience—one that bends form, voice, and tradition into something strikingly new. He pulls from both dominant and intimate schools of poetry, creating a synthesis that feels both timeless and revolutionary. He is, by all ramifications, an artist in the truest sense.

Jose Ferdinand, Author of Free Their Dragons

Some books whisper, and then some books wail. This one wails. It is poetry at its most visceral—gritty, surreal, and soaked in feeling. Odekunle’s voice is unlike any other: raw, elegant, and utterly inescapable.

Darius Finch, Author of Rituals for the Drowned

If you read poetry and do not feel compelled to revisit its lines, then it was not poetry at all. Emmanuel Odekunle understands this deeply. His words demand to be read, reread, and whispered aloud. His poetry does not follow the rules—it reinvents them. Every word carries a secret waiting to unfold; every image is a doorway into something deeper. He is a poet who sees the extraordinary in the ordinary and makes you believe in it too.

Penchant Rose, Author of What Ends the World Ends the Word

Odekunle's poetry drifts between states of being—solid and liquid, present and memory, self and reflection. His words echo like voices in tiled rooms, layering personal history with mythic weight. He does not merely write poetry; he unearths it. This collection is both ritual and reckoning.

Margaret Elwin, Poet and Editor of The Dissolving Line

These poems do not stay on the page. They spill, they flood, they seep into the skin. Every line feels like it has been wrung from the body, scrubbed in soap and ash, and left to dry under flickering washroom lights. This is not just poetry—it is a baptism, a haunting, a prayer spoken through water.

Celeste Rowan, Author of When the Mirror Crack