Gaynor Kane
Romeo & Juliet in the Anthropocene
thou art wedded to calamity – Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet
Walk in the woods with me, my Thoreau.
Paint my starry skin, my Van Gogh. Drink
my neurosis down to the dregs, my Romeo.
Post-apocalyptic Verona is all scorched
earth & grudges. Ravaged by the plague
of the mind on both our houses. Yet
we’re the outcasts. Small town minds are
all the same, no matter what side of
the tracks they judge on. Our families
prefer war over wedding cake, so we
married in secret. No rings, no witnesses,
just our desperate need for each other.
Lady Capulet says I am dead to her.
Lady Montague says you’ve gone mad.
Our fathers stay silent, complicit. We
set up house in a bubble. You watch
election results on the living room TV,
while I ponder suicide in the bathtub.
I was born for exile, a consequence of
neglect. Still, if given the choice, I
would have walked, willingly, eagerly,
barefoot, bleeding, bearing my burden
across the vast, toxic wasteland, giving
up everything just to die in your arms.
Let the dogs of dystopia howl at the gates
of crumbling civilization, humanity’s final
epoch. Your lips taste too sweet to resist.
V.C. Myers is the author of Give the Bard a Tetanus Shot (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2019) and a Contributing Poetry Editor of Barren Magazine. Her work has been displayed in ekphrastic exhibits, nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and appeared in journals worldwide, including Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, The Minnesota Review, Entropy, and Feral’s inaugural issue. Her website is vcmyers.com.
Gaynor Kane lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she is a part-time creative, involved in the local arts scene. She writes poetry and is an amateur photographer, and in both is looking to capture moments that might be missed otherwise. Discover more at gaynorkane.com.