BIO
Adam Middleton-Watts is an oddball British expat writing from 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 flagons of dark ale. He has had words printed in, the laughing dog, into the teeth of the wind, Icon, Illuminations, Art Times, Amoskeag, Iconoclast, Yawp, The Rambunctious Review, Vagabond city, The dying goose, Empty sink publishing, Milo review, The Bangalore Review, Four chambers, Foundling Review, Dewpoint, The Write Place, Delmarva Review, Adirondack Review, and various other publications.
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my father and his dog
she once ripped open her leg
and he was reluctant to take her to the vet
money being the dragon he stumbled after
though his thick fingers rarely touched their quarry
but he loved her all the same
and set aside his pain for hers
as anyone would for their
best friend
she was black on brilliant white
like arctic shadow
and would “own” the graveyard
of our youth
moving throughout the maze
of mossy stones
undomesticated
alert to all intruders
and to the sharp whistle
that called her
home
.
unknown now
And in the beginning there was love, there was
freedom. The two of us as we were then, in the
beginning of that book, uncontained navigators of
newness. We owned the dark wet streets, housed
ourselves in iconic corner bars, took on the incomparable
Massachusetts hook, that obstinate Atlantic. Stars fell
into our outstretched palms. The sand never quit finding
new places to scour. Sharks cruised the chilly darkness,
notching the New England nights with their secret blades.
Those wooden floors that gave us cool barefoot kisses.
The shower trickling like tears. Wine and beer, the front
door never locked. We were beautiful then, our young
lives swept up by an infallible wind. Dreams were our
guardians, our hides were thickened by them. In the
beginning we were love, and that was enough. The
beaches and bars, the irreverence we stood behind, so
much to carry us through, so much belief. Impossible
that it should dissolve, that we would one day shed
those glorious skins for the rags we wear now.
