as the crow-flowers tickle and the nettles prick her remembrances. she is a river of dream purpling the shadows of overhanging branches as, mermaid-like a while, she buoys herself up with flow and flight, no more the awkward baggage of a boy with clanking ghostly chains for brains. Kate Falvey’sContinue Reading

We set ourselves out at dawn when there’s nothing but brinesoak’d air and heath. The least weird of our sisters takes out a green Crayola marker and colored in a burnt orange leaf this morning. The ink was too thin: too much water, not enough pigment, running black between theContinue Reading

when you’re afraid to live and afraid to die every day is a conundrum to be or not to be the question calcifies your soul living involves risk failure heartache pain fear sits in your stomach like a rock as you grind your teeth and bite your nails not livingContinue Reading

No sportsman relishing a victoryagainst his foe in an athletic meetwould dish up such a large trajectoryof reportage. Yet she did who’d repeatthat some infatuated patron sethis heart upon her gender-bending rolein Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.Forget her flaunting feminine controlas Romeo’s ill-fated paramour -that followed later when she donned aContinue Reading

Every liar loves a laugh. Got to love the grief a handkerchief can bring. As sharp as a reef that handkerchief, my bully beef, a gold leaf for a sneak thief. What a relief at last to be lieutenant not that wax plant Cassio. About as brave as an eggplant.Continue Reading

All that was mine in Silvia I give thee –Two Gentlemen of Verona How to make a woman mute: Give her to your friend like the object of affection she always was. In Shakespeare, lovers are always trading rings, each one the licked fingerprint of a beloved, an arrow toContinue Reading

Descend. Be stone no more. – The Winter’s Tale “Was Shakespeare a Woman?” – Elizabeth Winkler, The Atlantic Remember, when absence comes along ringing his empty bell of doubt that everyone will someday dream about the loves they lost and those they left among the ruins when the bonds theyContinue Reading

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 youContinue Reading