Poetry: “Escape From the Filth Room” by Seth Wade
“Escape From the Filth Room” is both dreamlike and nightmarish, blurring images of consuming insects and slurping ooze with a vision of God. Particularly arresting moments come in the second and third stanzas’ turns, where the direct address calls readers to tumble alongside the speaker as they search for a way out. Ultimately, this poem’s version of rapture, a divine escape, is candied and lickable. Seth Wade captures just how bizarre it can feel to envision getting out of rooms in which we find ourselves ensnared for weeks.
Find their poem below.
Escape From the Filth Room
Raw and howling like roadkill
you crash through the door,
dislocating your shoulder
and bruising your face,
but now you’re out
of that place,
standing in the middle
of a staircase with red
shag carpeting, peeling
yellow walls.
You will never forget
that room. You will never
be the same. And you refuse
to ever go back there.
Down, up—both ways
go on forever. You limp down.
There must be an end
to everything.
Hours become days.
Days become weeks.
To survive, you slurp the slime
oozing out cracks in the rotten walls,
munch on the fat twitching bugs
infesting the wet furry steps.
Eventually you reach the end
and the end is God.
God is a blob.
Fear not, my child, God jiggles in joy.
You won’t believe all that life can be.
Suddenly, the stairs turn gooey
and coil down, squeezing you,
wrapping you like candy.
God licks you up.
Seth Wade
Seth Wade is a philosopher in the ethics of technology. You can read his fiction and poetry in publications like Strange Horizons, McSweeney’s, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Hunger Mountain Review, and elsewhere. He is also a Pushcart Prize nominee. You can follow him on X: @SethWade4Real or Instagram: @chompchomp4u or Bluesky: @sethwade.bsky.social
