act 1 scene 5 [leather pelts]
- act 1 scene 5 [leather pelts]
A WOMAN fashions herself into an animal. something unusual but obvious in the end. her teeth—all sixty-eight of them—are bright / the center of a small flame. A WOMAN as animal paces the stage. they will say she is searching for water. they will judge her by the color of her stomach. is she fit to starve. where on the body do we make the incision. imagine the stage as hospital. the front row a gallery & the surgery performed by a smoking gun. downstage left A WOMAN unhinges her jaw & lets out the world’s first sound. something akin to the touch of your finger to a burn. with ridges or blister-smooth. no one can harmonize with this sound. it is forgotten the moment her jaw snaps shut. A WOMAN can no longer chew. only tear & swallow. you may encourage the audience to feed her— hats scarves pens broaches. shiny objects not worth much like a nickel or a polished fingernail. [End Page 46]
Kathryne David Gargano (she/her) hails from the Pacific Northwest but isn’t very good at climbing trees. She received her MFA from the University of Nevada–Las Vegas and is currently pursuing a PhD in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Her work has been published in Pithead Chapel, the Colorado Review, Synaesthesia, and others. She is the winner of F(r)iction’s 2019 Summer Literary Contest in poetry, judged by Kay Ulanday Barrett, and her recent poem in Rust + Moth was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. You can find pictures of her three-legged pup on Instagram @peternelle3.
