I am your spaniel – A Midsummer Night’s Dream When you told Demetrius that the girl he lusted for was headed for the forest with the boy she wanted in her turn and then you followed him with hopes that he would beat you like his dog, I knew you were someone I could talk to. Say want is a shadow twin beguiling all our deeds, a double with us in the sac, a night-comforter and eater from our plate. Don’t let me deny want is my sister. Help me own her For I can take little from love’s platter though offered. I make love like the messenger bee, treasuring the glinting dust the flower shakes away. Helena, you do not want these ways. Your want is grasping, adores the face of its shame, feels hot in the cold, does not care if in the end you lick stolen love dropped by Oberon off the back of a truck. Teach me to want so. That I should not even need a potion to admit how I have longed for an ass’s head.
Read: Reading and Writing about Shakespeare by Elizabeth Sylvia
Elizabeth Sylvia (she/her) is a writer of poems and other lists who lives with her family in Massachusetts, where she teaches high school English and coaches debate. Elizabeth’s work is upcoming or has recently appeared in Salamander, Pleiades, Soundings East, J Journal, RHINO, Main Street Rag and a bunch of other wonderful journals. She is currently working on a verse investigation of the writer Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard.