Bonus Cut

Digby, 1
By: Abby Conklin 

In my dream,
we are racing along the side
of a dark green edge
of the basin, past where
the scrawny salmon fisheries
have left their rubber crowns,
drifting,
on the salt surface.
The ferry comes through the gut
from the Fundy, between
rocks’ steep gray scales.
Quiet is different, here- only
the ship’s moan of the horn hangs
in the air. As if here, there is never
too much space for the not human.
While the United States exerts
every measurable force against
the wiles of nature, the Canadian
government,
people,
its very national flesh,
have calmly consented to being
cowed by the Earth.
“Don’t mind us,” say the standard-shift
cars, as they bend between swells
of lands carved, in turn, by glacier,
wind,
and time. Erosion,
in its purist form, without pollution
or loggings’ getting involved.
No, here, it makes sense
that water, coupled with sharp
winter air, would rinse layer after layer
from the skeleton that is the land,
until it is nakedly shivering
against its own flat self, as the ferry
slips between, and we run on
towards home.

This is Bonus Cut Poetry, a series that features original poems by Bonus Cut staff, artists and YOU! In this series, our mission is to bring people together in poetry, share stories and display wonderful artistic pieces. If you would like to have your poems in the next Bonus Cut Poetry installment, just email us at bonuscut@gmail.com

This installment features Bonus Cut’s
own Abby Conklin.

Work in progress: part II
By: Abby Conklin 

I strapped up with wings
called myself a hero
and jumped off the roof
like I had urgent business
at the bottom.  When I drink enough,
I disconnect from the vodka,
like you with your wedding
ring, dangling like a fuck you
to the women to come.
One day, maybe I’ll feel lucky
enough to be questionably lucky,
sleeping in the same bed as someone
I can endure the morning after
being unconscious after
a day of being human after
pretending to know lots of things
in actuality I don’t. I tried
to check my bags at the door.
I tried to fall down, drunk.  I tried
to knock, walk in, and sit down
without making a fuss over the size
of the cushion on the chair,
and the clots of dust along its dimples.
I know all the words this time,
I swear.  Sweat it out with me.
I love you.

This is Bonus Cut Poetry, a series that features original poems by Bonus Cut staff, artists and YOU! In this series, our mission is to bring people together in poetry, share stories and display wonderful artistic pieces. If you would like to have your poems in the next Bonus Cut Poetry installment, just email us at bonuscut@gmail.com

This installment features Bonus Cut’s own Abby Conklin.

Consent
By: Abby Conklin

When you cut into a kiwi fruit kept
in the fridge overnight, sliding knife
through furred skin, things feel easier
than they should.  It’s as if, that whole
time you slept, the fruit was wrapping
itself in firmness.  Lighting up hair
by hair, until its whole was stretched taut
in anticipation of the warm cup
of your hand, and the betrayal
of its paring knife, at six-something
on an October morning.

When you cut into a kiwi fruit left
out on the counter, however.
Then, after a night spent in the wash
that is Upper Manhattan coming
in through the screen of your kitchen window.

Be prepared.

This fruit has not been slowly drawn
into the farcical comfort of numbness.
It will not give so easily.  Flesh,
dimpling under the unkind point
of your steel, will raise an eyebrow
in question.  One chance,
it will be saying.
One chance.
Consider the full weight of your action,
balance precarious as it nudges
closer to the surface of a life.  Do you know
what you are doing?

Do you know
what you will have done?

This is Bonus Cut Poetry, a series that features original poems by Bonus Cut staff, artists and YOU! In this series, our mission is to bring people together in poetry, share stories and display wonderful artistic pieces. If you would like to have your poems in the next Bonus Cut Poetry installment, just email us at bonuscut@gmail.com

This installment features Bonus Cut’s own Abby Conklin.

Go Fuck Yourself
By: Abby Conklin 

I want to vomit
the last two years.
Uproot from my gut
the relationship, break
up, the before plus
its after.  The cramped
hiccups of crying
on my apartment floor.
A mind wreaking havoc
at all hours of the day
hazed over with the effort
of being awake.  Months-

months

months of fighting
for what turned out
to be nothing.  The getting
over, the moving on.  Enough
realizations to fill
meeting notes’ margins
on mornings after nights
walled with twisting dreams.
Shaking it all off, trying
to get the blood gone stale
to move.

I want to vomit it all
in my hands- my whole
life since you, and hold
it out as if it is the answer
you seem to still be searching
for.  Here.
Here is what I have made
for myself, and did you want
it back, strangling keeper
of dreams?  I seem to remember
everything I had being consumed,
teeth first, by you.  Here, take
it.  Make a meal of your poison:
the ways in which I
do not need you.

This is Bonus Cut Poetry, a series that features original poems by Bonus Cut staff, artists and YOU! In this series, our mission is to bring people together in poetry, share stories and display wonderful artistic pieces. If you would like to have your poems in the next Bonus Cut Poetry installment, just email us at bonuscut@gmail.com

This installment features Bonus Cut’s own Abby Conklin.

At the Water Cooler
By: Abby Conklin

I do not know what kind
of jokes you make about
the people you work
with.  Maybe their anxiety.
Maybe one OCD gum-chewer’s
jaws, or the leaver-of-stained-
coffee-mugs’ trail through the break
room.  There’s a lot to be said
for the things that make us human.
Which is likely why
my coworkers and I stood
at the edge of the indoor
track today, at our students’
summer olympics, cracking
jokes about the rattling nature
of the starting gun.
These kids don’t run
this kind of race when they hear
that shit! we laughed.  They run
as fast as they can from 
wherever it came from!  Jokes
that aren’t jokes when you’ve heard
your coworker wish for a house
in Connecticut.  Talked about a window
looking out at her sons playing
in a back yard, instead of pounding down
her auto-locked front door, trying
to get away from playground gunshots.

This is Bonus Cut Poetry, a series that features original poems by Bonus Cut staff, artists and YOU! In this series, our mission is to bring people together in poetry, share stories and display wonderful artistic pieces. If you would like to have your poems in the next Bonus Cut Poetry installment, just email us at bonuscut@gmail.com

This installment features Bonus Cut’s own Abby Conklin.

Whatever It Takes
By: Abby Conklin

Shout out to Bel Kaufman; RIP
Sorry.
Sorry for what?
SORRY.  I’m SORRY.
Turn down for what?
Yo, but that music video
though.
Shut up, I’m trying to get his attention.
Shut up.  Turn down.
YO, sorry for WHAT?
He’s talking to himself again.
Yo, don’t we get paid
to listen to him talk to himself?
Yo, Flash Gordon over here.
Yo, which ONE?  He’s got
them all running like that
now.  Wait, stop him before
he- SHIT.
Is she okay?
Yo, that’s what you get
when you five years old
and so messed up you won’t
get up off the floor.
Yo but didn’t her brother PUSH
her there?
Did he take his meds today?
I dunno- the older one’s acting normal,
so I know he did.  But maybe
mom’s giving them the same
dose again.
Yo.
Yo.
Yo.  NO.
Shit’s insane.
No, the kids are.
The kids are not the shit.
No?
I thought we were excited
about them-
Yo, FUCK you!
Is it nine yet?
Are they done yet?
Have you left yet, is it raining
yet, has it stopped raining
yet, yo, where you at?
Yo, where you at, I wanna
get an ice, but the dude’s gonna leave
before my lunch.
Yo, where you goin’
for lunch?
That a chopped cheese?
Yo, you eat some shit.
Yo, YOU eat some shit.
Yo, alla you shut up, I’m on
the phone with my child’s school.
Oh shit.
Is it two yet?  You leave
a message?  Where you goin’?
You finish your lesson plan?
Yo, CHILL, seriously.  Y’all do not
have to be this turned up
by recess.
Yo, where you at, her moms is here.
Yo, I JUST got my shit started
and now you takin’ her?
Yo, not my fault.
My man, there are TWO HOURS LEFT
of program-
Sotto Voce: yo, ‘an why can’t
you take HIM instead?
Yo, I can’t with you.
Yeah, yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah,
yeah.  Yeah, you, go home, YO
THAT DOESN’T MEAN THE REST
OF Y’ALL GET TO-
yo.
What?
I’m here to observe.
Yo, observe what?
Your academic project lesson.
Yo, you put that on my morning
schedule.  I am not doing that shit
at 2:33 P-M.
Well-
Yo, well NOTHIN’, you can come
back another-
No, imma just take notes now.
HEY.
YO.
YO, GET OFF HER.
Hey, you better fill out an incident
report for that.
Yo, there aren’t any more.
Says who?!
Yo, I was in there THIRTY
MINUTES AGO after he bit
him.  We out.
Yo, yeah, we totally out.
Print more.
Yo, your printer’s broke.
Go to headquarters.
Yo, only half my team came
in today, I’m not about to leave-
Yo, she’s goin’ home.
Copy.  Copy that.  Yo,
your dad’s here, go.  Can anyone
tell me-
Hey, I’m gonna go now.
Yo, you left your notebook.
Miss, miss, when are we gonna-
STOP IT.  ALL YOU GET
OFFA HIM.  Are you-
Sorry!  I’m sorry.
Sorry for what?
SORRY.

I’m sorry.