Innuendos Don’t Behave
Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail.
In his tongue.
Whose tongue?
Yours, if you talk of tails: and so farewell.
What, with my tongue in your tail?
Nay, come again, Good Kate;
I am a gentleman.
—William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
(exchange between Petruchio and Katherine)
Love looks like blue skies, nay.
Today is the tango of sister twisters.
Innuendos don’t behave. They slave
over the mountains and valleys.
Twines of a forked tongue, devilishly
misbehaving, drunken in delight.
Good Kate, is she kind, his kind of date?
Will she satisfy his intellect, his loins?
Is he a gentleman, this Shakespeare?
Is his lady worthy of remarkable taste?
Petruchio, with his yellow jacket,
prepared to sting, with lover’s words.
Katherine’s falling into the Venus fly trap
as she plays along, bidding farewell.
Petruchio draws her back in
wagging his tail and tongue.
These heavy boots filled by Taylor and Burton
acting in real time and on the silver-tongued screen.
If the ballroom could produce such a tango as this,
Shakespeare himself would rise and erupt in applause.
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