Deepfake Hot-Take
Watching Much Ado About Nothing now
in modern times pervaded by Fake News,
the pair of men deceived by Don John’s ruse
appear to me less like the mean dumb cows
I took them for. It used to pain me how
Pedro, who at the play’s start is his crew’s
sage, seasoned leader, smart enough to choose
Beatrice to offer marriage to, her scowl
and sharp tongue notwithstanding, goes half-cracked
midway through Act Three, mixing Hero up
with Margaret based on circumstantial facts,
and thinks to ask no further questions. Claudio
seemed even worse, an undeserving pup….
Who’d blame them now, amid forged pics and audio?
Jenna Le (jennalewriting.com) authored Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011) and A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2018), which won Second Place in the Elgin Awards. She won Poetry By The Sea’s sonnet award in 2019 and its sonnet-crown award in 2020. Her poetry appears in Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, and West Branch.