Charles and Mary Lamb

By Emily Bowles

Remember when they
dismembered—that is to say,
remembered, differently,
Shakespeare’s stories?

Morally didactic
rewritings,
Victorian
revisings,
cognitive
rewirings,

no happy endings
(even to comedies)?

Remember when they
made us allegorically
believe there was is
meaning?

Why not
not
for me,

when I have these dreams,
Andronicus reckonings,
and Coriolanus tearing flies
apart
at the seams,
& how it seems
as if we have our own way of wings?

These Lambs lull us with lullabies not
fit for sheep counting, ewe know,
darkling, what it is to sleep without a dream.