SCHNAUZER (a play in one act) by David Yezzi

They call me Clip because I ruined our couch.
When I was a kid I was kind of a neat freak;
anything slightly messy drove me crazy,
every rough edge or hair left out of place.
I used to get black dirt under my nails
from playing in the yard, fingers and toes
black with heavy crescents of oily dirt,
so disgusting. It used to make me sick.
So I cut my toenails and my fingernails
right down to the skin till they were smooth,
except I cut too close and I started bleeding
all over my Mom's white sofa, which I tried to clean,
but the water on it only stained it worse—
silk, I guess. So then they called me Clip.

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David Yezzi’s Schnauzer is a bold play-in-verse about our feral need for love untethered. Wild. Rabid. Reminiscent of early Albee, across leaps of time in vivid scenes suffused with a haunting lyricism and humor, Yezzi conjures characters struggling to wake up to the animal appetites of life. "
(DAN O'BRIEN / author, Body of an American)

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Perfect Bound
58 pages