For My Cousin, The Stripper, by Maari Carter

Maari Carter is originally from Winona, MS. Her poems have appeared in such places as Salt Hill Journal, Superstition Review, and SundogLit, among others. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at Florida State University, where she serves as Poetry Editor of The Southeast Review.


Familial mythology is often a point of interrogation in my work as a way to examine the causality of that initial priming that occurs through inherited narratives and the schematic dissonance it can create, even within something as interconnected as the family unit. With this poem, in particular, I wanted to focus on oppositional epistemologies without privileging one or the other, but acknowledge the cost and limitations of each.