house of pain

My essay "House of Pain" is online now at Upstart Journal.

It's part of a collection of queer writers responding to Shakespeare's Sonnets.

Mine is a response to #46.

Reading Shakespeare in school was a challenge for me, not only because I was fatally shy and we usually had to read it aloud as a class but also because I was asked to dig for meaning, plot or logic. I was always more interested in the texture of the writing and the details that were brought forth.

In writing my essay, I started thinking about the voyeurism of my favorite reality show "Big Brother" and the ideas and ethics of the eye and heart at "mortal war." I ended up being struck by how many elements were responding to one another and how the imagery also ended up relating to much of the language in the sonnet.