As/Is







11.11.2025


Adam Fieled (Logan Square, Philadelphia, USA): "Run Away With Me"

for Dani Diendorf

I was thinking as I listened to her
    about Byron’s relentless nihilism,
that only found out in intoxication
    any kind of remedy for the things
she was telling me about abortions,
    forced entries, deaths, and how no I won’t go
home with you
, and how Byron
    alone among the Romantics dealt
overtly with sex, not just love like
   Shelley or fantasy like Keats or Nature

like Wordsworth the dull sheep,
   and all the blokes in the bar were
staring at her— green eyes, red hair,
   bust, you know the kind that blokes
will stare at, and I thought Byron
   really caught something a seed,
a kernel of what Nietzsche ran away
   with (recurrence!), so I said please run
away with me
and she laughed, looked down
    into her beer and was finished—

© Adam Fieled 2009-2025

Run Away With Me was originally published as Sex and Nihilism in Otoliths 13 in 2009.