A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Praise all the things that might be fucked. The riverbanks. Flowers called wild pansy and thyme and oxlip. Fruitless visions. Clouds full fast. Athenians and handsome, strong Lysander. Praise the rivers and the fog. The moons and acorn trees. A thrust of the hips. And another thrust. Spray it all with love-juice and watch as it transforms. A burning wound will open, and out will spill rubies and hounds and graves and the darkness like a dream. And still, you will be fucking. Always down and deeper. Until you find a young man with the head of an ass. His cock, so long it drags in the brambles of the forest floor. And as he makes his furrows there, weeds will grow and shady cloisters and a chanting of faint hymns. Dress the donkey-eared youth in lilies and hyacinth and send him along a shaded path to a circle made of stones. Remind him that fairies are nothing more than dead men, and common sleep is a charm made of honeysuckle and mournfulness and wavering love. By now, you’ll be growing tired yourself. You’ll feel dogged and slow, all rotted through. Soon, you too will think of sleep. And what will come to you, I wonder? Will it be the fairy king with his eyes all black, hands cold and reaching? Or maybe another grinning imp, all decked in violets and musk-rose. Some passionate word. Some quaking fear. The forest sounds like midnight, doesn’t it? The heavy gait. The starlit field. Let me touch you on your brow. Let me tell you that you are young. There are answers, you know? You shall play it in a mask. The moon wanes. See how it goes?
Adam McOmber is the author of the novels The White Forest (Touchstone), Jesus and John (Lethe), The Ghost Finders (JournalStone), Hound of the Baskervilles (Lethe Press), and the forthcoming With Blood Upon His Teeth (Lethe, 2026). He is also the author of the short fiction collections My House Gathers Desires and This New & Poisonous Air (BOA), and Fantasy Kit (Black Lawrence Press). He is co-chair of the Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, editor in chief of the literary magazine Hunger Mountain, and director of the UCX Writers’ Conference.