SNAKE
HE THAT HAS BEEN BITTEN BY A SNAKE IS AFRAID OF A ROPE
*(Edward Albee)
And I said to my friend Gregory: Who among us doesn’t
have a bleeding goat in his living room? He looked at me
quizzically We’d just seen Edward Albee: The Goat Or
Who Is Sylvia? Then waxing poetic about Las Vegas +
yesterday’s church shooting in Texas 27 dead from 17 mths
to 82 He ran for the loo But who is not familiar with this
blood-dimmed tide?
I wasn’t being hypothetical the original meaning of tragedy
is goat-song The play is about all the desires we cannot control
or even admit we have The dad Martin falls in full blown love
with a goat after 20 yrs. of marriage He comes to know Sylvia in
the biblical sense by the fence at a farm where she lives nearby
And with Clytemnestra’s cry the scorned wife disembowels little
Sylvia +brings her home for dinner? A twisted tale of bestiality +
ritual sacrifice Now let us look at matricide Orestes slays his mother
Clytemnestra +the furies torment him for eternity Unsuffer me
YES (!) hypothetically there is a bloodied goat on my coffee table It
resembles my mother
Both Electra + Oedipal urges are normal aspects of human development
As long as one does not act upon them Ditto the murder instinct for adultery
Last night Ms. Raquel Duffy acted on our behalf She played the wife Stevie
in all of her liberal democratic civility Smashing a vase or 3 throwing books
to the floor Later making a beeline for the door + going Greek
Stevie using the families cerated honey-cake knife slit the little she goat’s throat
Then dragged her husband’s lover home dripping goatblood all over beige shag rugs
Now tell me which scorned woman out there will have Ms. Duffy act on her behalf
tonight? The line forms here
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Fall 2017 (Salvation operates in the abyss. Adelia Prado 1988)
songanddancegirl 