A Drag Queen Queers Shakespeare

A Drag Queen Queers Shakespeare
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

Yes, even Shakespeare must be queered (well, it's already been done, but I'm going to do it again). And what better way to queer Shakespeare than by having a Drag Queen do it (a Drag Queen is a symbol for going against the status quo). But I prefer to "lavenderize" or "bend" Shakespeare because I'm not a fan of post-structuralist queer theory (I disagree with most of it; I rather a Social Queer Theory or a Critical Queer Theory or a New Queer Theory a la Max H. Kirsch and Michael Hames-Garcia). So, my poem lavenderizes Shakespeare. It is titled " A Drag Queen Writes to William Shakespeare" and it responds to Sonnet #78, and was published in the book, Out of Sequence: The Sonnets Remixed, edited by D. Gilson, published by Clemson University's Upstart: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies and Parlor Press.

"A Drag Queen Writes to William Shakespeare"

Hey, Billy Boy,

Gurl, I'm happy to be your muse
But where the fuck you been?
I haven't seen you at any of my shows
You're making this queen angry
Just sayin'

I'm flattered by your poems about me
Werk!
Yeah, I know I'm sickening
And yeah the other writers love me too
What can I say, I muthafuckin' fabulous

But seriously, gurl, get off your ass
Put down the pen
Stop writing for one day
And come see me and the other queens
We miss you

It's not like your writing any masterpieces
You can't spend every day alone writing poems
Plus I rather you flatter me in person
My ego needs some stroking as does my...
Well, you know... when it ain't tucked

Anyway, gurl, just being real
You can't live your entire life in books
No T, No shade
The library is open and I don't mean yours
Bam!

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot