Adam Stemple

BAR FIGHT

he throws the drunk
to the barroom floor
sickening crunch
of skull on cement
but the drunk is up again
nose flattened
and blood
from a thirty stitch gash
streaming down his forehead
he’s half-blind with it
but doesn’t know
he’s hurt
and he’s still throwing
haymakers
like he’s Don Quixote
and the bar is full
of windmills.

eyes wide
with the knowledge
of what he’s done
the first guy eats the next three
punches clean on the chin
before we pull them apart


Adam's YouTube video reading of "Bar Fight"


Adam confesses: "I’ve seen this a few times and experienced it myself: that moment of stunned inactivity when you realize what horrors you’re capable of inflicting on another human being."

ADAM STEMPLE is an award-winning author, poet, and musician. Of his first novel, Singer of Souls, SFWA Grandmaster Anne McCaffrey said, "One of the best first novels I have ever read." Of his later works, Hugo Award winning author Naomi Kritzer said, "No one writes bastard-son-of-a-bitch characters as brilliantly as Adam Stemple."

Adam Stemple

THE DREAM

the dream is a corpse
rotting in school hallways
and the grocery aisle at Walmart
sacrificed on the anthill altar
of colony and mindlessness

the dream is a lie
oft-repeated
by shaved heads and tailored suits
brothers-in-arms in a war
that only they are fighting

the dream is a fire
that chars the conqueror's soul
and tells him to burn his ships
on the shores of a world
new only to him

the dream is a bullet
hollow, pointed,
spinning
how many revolutions
till it strikes its target

and a new corpse is made
a new lie is spun
and the fire peels back
another layer of skin
from our gutless skeletons?


Adam's YouTube video reading of "The Dream"


Adam confesses: "No matter how many times we’ve screwed it up in the past, I’ve always believed the dream of America—the dream of a country united not by race, religion, or culture, but by the tenets set out in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence—was something worth fighting for. I wrote this poem when I felt the fight was lost."

ADAM STEMPLE is an award-winning author, poet, and musician. Of his first novel, Singer of Souls, SFWA Grandmaster Anne McCaffrey said, "One of the best first novels I have ever read." Of his later works, Hugo Award winning author Naomi Kritzer said, "No one writes bastard-son-of-a-bitch characters as brilliantly as Adam Stemple."