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You are here: Home / 36.1 / Stripping

Stripping

36.1, Poetry by Scott McWaters

Blunt words are the knife that carves a lamb. I see a butcher slowly taking her clothes off. “What are you doing?” I ask, but she only smiles. The butcher continues stripping. She knows that the only currency worthy of time resides in mystery.

Only human choice is dramatic. Migratory patterns are predictable when the environment controls all. The difference between the king and the coral snake is patterning. Snakes in the grass are proof that the natural world is not our home.

The audience hopes that this time she will remain on stage long enough for them to snap a picture of what is underneath. Nudity is hard work. You need the mob to keep you alive.

This is the way drama is played out. Your very language depends on it.

 

Scott McWaters is an instructor in the English Department at the University of Alabama. 

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(Bloomsbury 2019).

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