NOTE FOUND IN A COPY OF MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
Lesley says she’s going to write ya
so I thought I’d say hello first!
I’m glad you two made up. You’re a great guy
and Lesley deserves the best. Well gotta go!
I love Jacob! Bye—Robyn.
Judging by the abrupt disappearance
of highlighter, I’d guess
he gave up during Act Two. He? She?
Did Bryan leave it here,
or was it never delivered?
Bryan,
I did want to do
what we did last night! I just felt sick
and like it would take all of my energy!
I did not do anything that I did not want to do!
Through the windows of the library
the leaves shiver to the tune
of Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy.
It all tastes of the jammy fingers
that last handled these headphones.
Everything we did I wanted to happen!
You didn’t make me do anything!
If I didn’t want to do something
or didn’t want you to do something
I would of said something to you about it!
It’s the moment when Helena pursues
Demetrius into the forest.
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
Evidence is emerging to suggest
that Shakespeare’s plays
may have been written by a sexually liberal
daughter of Jewish musicians.
Bryan, I love you and I don’t want you
to feel like you raped me! In the film,
they’re on bicycles,
and Calista Flockhart, perhaps surprisingly,
holds her own.
I wonder if there’s a cafeteria on this floor.
You DIDN’T so I wish you wouldn’t feel that way!
Barbara Johnson has an exceptional essay
on the usage of the second person address
somewhere on these shelves.
I will not stay thy questions; let me go,
Or if thou follow me, do not believe
But I shall do thee mischief in the wood.
Finally, here comes the rain.
Even inside, the smell of hot pavement
gives the Reading Room an erotic humidity.
Have Akiko Suwanai’s recordings
of the Fantasy sold better than others’
because of the cover photo of her, lounging
with her luscious hair raining down?
You are a pretentious patronizing dickwad.
Well, I have to go now and pay
attention to Professor Roberts.
I Love You W/All My Heart!
Her dotage now I do begin to pity.
Love Always, Lesley Anne Busch.
I could give this to Mike Roberts
who might call the police
or at least a student counselor.
Not that it would change much.
Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex.
How many wives have, on occasion,
just lay back and let their men
get it over with? Probably all of them.
How many men had the senses
to notice, and feel anger or guilt?
Fare thee well, nymph; ere he do leave this grove
Thou shalt fly him,
and he shall seek thy love.
And which would have been worse for them,
losing the note, or having someone return it?
Akiko Suwanai tears through the final runs of the Fantasy,
her hands damp from the rain
that is peppering the library windows.
Bottom, with his ass-head,
gropes his way toward the spell-bound queen.
From Complicity (McClelland & Stewart, 2014) by Adam Sol
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