Rough Cuts
A Poetry Chapbook By Allison Nusbaum
- Table of Contents Introduction 3 - 5 Process 6 Condition 7 Advice 8 Artists 9 Death 10-11
Surgical Wound 12-13 Back from the War 14 Glass 15-17 America 18-20 22nd Christmas 21 Camping Trip 22-23 1
Pt. 1: Happiness 24 Pt. 2: Ode to Gobble 25 Love 26
DVDs 27-29 The Giant 30-31 Sun and Moon 32
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Introduction Hello and welcome to “Rough Cuts”! This poetry collection comes from poems I have written throughout this semester. The title refers a saying, that life is a rough cut – you can’t get everything perfect. Similarly, all these poems only reveal one new perspective on their subjects. There are still many ways to look at these topics. And speaking of a variety, these poems also cover a large selection of styles of poetry. By the end of this chapbook I hope you get a glimpse of my experience this semester of trying out different styles of poetry. This book follows a mood – from darkness to light, with some surprising breaks in between as any proper journey should have. For example, “Love” (the poem is about the title) I felt, subject-wise, didn’t quite perfectly fit in the emotional train of the chapbook. But I couldn’t help but feel that that was only appropriate for the poem to unexpectedly come out of nowhere. I hope that it proves to be a pleasant surprise. There are a few other surprise breaks as well. Consider them breaks from the overall journey of the book, some fun, unexpected side trips or hidden gems. This semester I tried out a wide variety of styles (not to mention subjects) but I feel that they are tied together by a common approach of philosophical musing. All of these poems are, in one way or another, an inquiry into the nature of things, whether they be traditional subjects such as love or depression, more concrete subjects such as glass or a fictional creature, or the always controversial space of the body. All of these poems muse on their subjects’ relationship to the wider world. The structure of this book reminds me of other books of poetry that I have read, even nursery rhymes. Each poem is its own little rumination. And so in the process of reading the book the reader goes on a guided meditation through a variety of subjects. At the end of “Rough
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Cuts” the reader has experienced a peaceful wealth of one of the basic joys of poetry: the chance to see things from a new perspective. In the revision of my poetry I have considered clarity paramount. This semester I have shared my poetry with readers and heard their feedback, which is a new experience for me. And so in the process I have learned how to take into account readers’ needs. Basically, this has meant changing or adjusting language so that it cues the appropriate message to readers. I found that sometimes my reviewers took a word in a way other than that which I had intended. Sometimes it inspired me, other times it just confused the poem. To further clarify the meaning of each poem in this collection I have given each poem its own page with a colored background that accents the meaning of the poem. The original poetry mostly came to me on their own. They spoke clearly inside my head and I transcribed them, with a little editing here and there. I have enjoyed watching them come to light. And it is another experience entirely to publish them, knowing that they’ve made it out into the world. When a poem came to me only partly formed, I have tried to flesh it out on my own so that readers understand what it the phrase is getting at. Often I feel that something has been lost in my translation, but these poems have ironically often been the most easily understood. Besides style and clarity the literary element I experimented the most with was the layout of the poem. I tried out different ways of arranging the phrases and words in poems and playing around with spaces. That is a new element to my writing process that I will keep incorporating into my writing even after the end of the semester. In the future I hope to keep trying out new styles until perhaps I finally find my own. I feel that I am getting closer. With each new style I feel I find a little bit more of my voice, sculpt a little more of it out of
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the raw stone of poetry. But then I discover a new poetic form and realize that I still have a lot farther to go. I feel that I have tried out some new techniques and approaches to poetry this semester. I have certainly experimented with different styles of poetry while covering a wide variety of subjects. I think that “Rough Cuts” gives readers a large selection of subjects to meditate on and is structured in such a way that they won’t get lost in the wealth. Overall, I think the collection will give the readers a taste of the poetry journey I have been on this semester.
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Process Depression is a sour stone You suck on And spit out poetry
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Condition Self doubt Is a disability As if someone clipped the brain cells Cut the nerves An internal absence Yanking one back at the last moment From full existence
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Advice Your emotions: Burn them (alcohol is good ignition) They illuminate too much Best to reduce them to ash Lose them in the breeze
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Artists What is it with these artists? Dragged along by an unseen force To paint, to write, to play What do they see In the bottom of a heroin needle or in cutting off their ear? We see them not so much as humans As prophetical travelers From a world we cannot perceive Spewing madness And trying to reach us
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Death Death. No one is the same. Not even the mechanical conformity of the modern genocide Can conform a person’s being Each experience as individual as a fingerprint The same event and yet not the same The mass of translucent flesh and 100 billion brain cells Out and breathing for only a few hours Harsh muscle, young eyes Culture, biology and self at the cusp of permanent arrangement Forced into meaning at the end of a bayonet Half senseless beast blundering about Ended by the contact of a mechanical horse Didn’t have long anyway Ancient being, Too much life in him to hang on now, much longer It creases the skin, this wealth of living Any moment to take the full payment For the decadence that is life
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Not human, not animal One of trillions, Picked And placed in the vase On the windowsill Quietly Withering away It is a whole, a half, an eighth a sixteenth rest In the music of life Which may yet have to hold on for a fermata Cruel music, no?
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Surgical Wound It sits there The man’s leg Like a cut of lamb White, wet muscle Never meant to see the light of day The sterile talc professionals flit past the open wound Full of Red But not bleeding Hours earlier The surgeon took a knife A heavy, sharp knife Just below the man’s breastbone And carefully, carefully cut into just the skin Like your father would the Thanksgiving turkey In a line halfway down his chest A clever weighted device Holds back the skin from closing back in
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The man is no longer there Long gone under 500 mg of amethocaine His face still and peaceful As gloved hands Rearrange the delicate piping of his body Like a game of Jenga
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Back From The War His body is a Picasso It begins and ends on a whim A missing ring finger here A lost pinkie there Two left feet, literally The surgeon sewed on the wrong one Deaf in one ear And the left eye missing too A half a set of fake teeth And a new heart, pumping away These negations and additions At odds with his new tailored suit Unconsciously highlighting the untouched sandy brown hair But the lack that makes him the curiosity of all the town Is the missing case of Depression
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Glass Is there anything more forbidden Than breaking a glass thing? To drop a vase, a cup A glass bird
They live Between air and solid Between light and weight
They defy Us lumbering Mismatched Sweating Coughing
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greying crying lined Species
With our bare eyes Ten knobbly fingers And two legs A strange creature, even to ourselves Stranger still to the animal world
But glass Lives in the perfection of our thoughts And the elegance of nature
Pity the child who Shatters the paperweight Reaching into its sparkling depths
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As you would the doctor Cutting into the cadaver Both seeking to know The deepest truths Of their existence
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America The US is the wealthiest nation in the world I didn’t know that growing up I knew America as vast miles of empty highway And small towns with tired houses, sleepy stores and empty lots Looking like a person who’s half their flesh is dead Parents who leaned heavily on religion for child care and support Bartered over video prices Always bought the cheapest bread And seriously considered the generic cereal People who filtered and picked through the abundance of the big box stores Blinders up to the lush images of indulgence
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And knew the tv shows didn’t portray poverty right Long immune to advertising’s pull of the easy life Then we moved to Indiana and I learned that we were well off And I saw the liberal movies and We visited New York City Went up in the Empire State Building Went to Chicago and saw the expensive cars Sometimes I wonder What separates us from those Southern countries With their plantations and service workers
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The sheer opportunity, I guess That raw, emasculating rat race An idea, that like God, is praised When things go well and Forgotten about when they go bad
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22nd Christmas
Crap You give it, get it, eat it at Christmas The overworked mothers The clueless dads The kids Adults, now Wish we could just slow it down Cut stuff out Like the candy canes Just be together around a ritual For help, not hindrance But an overstrained ritual demands otherwise
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Camping Trip Thirty Percent DEET A Gift for ticks, mosquitoes and biting flies But hopefully not the fish illustrated just above them A chemical sheen To rub into the pores of the face and neck And your child’s face, too To survive the great outdoors Seventy Percent “Other Ingredients” 33% more: 8 oz at the 6 oz price Steel: recyclable it says No CFCs for the ozone
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Considering that I am holding death in my hands Whose kills include Most of Vietnam’s forests And death never smelled so sweet
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Pt. 1: Happiness You Deserve Said the fb ad To be happy (Cheap therapy: $35 a month, all you want) As if happiness was like an all you can eat buffet Or should be bought second hand Because the price, the price Is what matters
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Pt. 2: Ode to Gobble Happiness is a commodity that capitalism can’t understand You don’t just deserve to be happy You deserve to be the queen of the neighborhood To lose the world in the escape of a movie To wear clothing that doesn’t match To feel the peace of a breeze on a bright day To feel, deep down in your soul Regret, loss, turmoil To cry to yell to scream To desire to rip to shreds what tore you apart And to throw out what hurts you To tear down all you built In the face of all the world
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Love Our unending, ceaseless project The burden of our species Remade every day In this great breath that we call life
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DVDs Do you remember DVDs? Those shiny little discs In plastic cases? An antique of a time before the internet I have The Lord of the Rings The entire collection; the box set Fullscreen emblazoned in gold foil The best sheen on the outside box The highest quality artwork for the covers A different color plastic for each case They had no idea what was coming
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You take them out of the little boxes Press on the little buttons Pop them out Open the device that plays them Place that futuristic disc in It hums and whirrs And then it appears Play Enter Pause And then, because it is a movie I take off my sweatshirt To be comfortable Negotiate the screen into a permanent position 28
For long term viewing And turn off all the lights Because it is a movie (even as it plays on VLC on my computer)
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The Giant I sleep between two mountains As a hammock I keep an elephant for a pet Catch a cloud to wash my face Dip my toes in lakes And clean my feet with the tops of trees Have to wade out into the ocean For a swim Careful not to knock the whales Dry myself off in the desert Pick a tree For my elephant Watch my footprints Fill with rainwater And the animals flock to them
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Walk back up to my valley And try to sleep Despite the stars
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Sun and Moon No mere pinpricks in the sky Or ephemeral, ever changing forms But a solid presence To ground a species
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The End