Wednesday 20 April 2016

1 Poem by Adam Middleton-Watts

maidens tell it like it is 

In these bars, where blood rims the toilet bowl,
and God drowns in streaks of steaming piss,
the darkness in the corner starts to breathe. Slim
hands touch scarred and oily wood. A voice roars
baritone vitriol, as eyes slip under tenuous hoods.
Discordant songs gather the threads of memory.
Maidens group and cackle, twisting gaudy rings over
lethal bone, the collective scent of their sex rises dirty
and old, like bedding in a long forgotten room.
Smiles are counterfeit icons here, and accolades
reek of war. The darkness breathes, some dire
sense of mystery is swelling. The maidens shift
and stand, their red-smeared cigarettes fall. 

Violence stirs in the stale breath of shadow. 


Bionote 

Adam Middleton-Watts is an oddball British expat writing from the flatlands of South Dakota. When he’s not dissolving in the midst of a savage summer or fattening up for the next brutal winter, he’s writing poems and stories on the backs of unpaid utility bills and drinking too much dark ale. He has had words printed in many a magazine, and can tell a bison from a handsaw. 

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