Transcript for the Hosted Version (Hosted by Kurt Andersen) version of The Cutting Place

HOST IN: I’m Kurt Andersen. This month, Studio 360 presents “In Verse” – a multimedia reporting project that combines poetry and interviews, and photography. This installment takes us to Troy in upstate New York. A century ago Troy was a seriously thriving manufacturing town. Today, it is very much not that. We’ll hear a poem called “The Cutting Place,” by Susan B.A. Somers-Willet. It tells the story of DJ Guerin, who’s 32, with 7 kids. DJ works in a convenience store and recently had to move in with her mother. Heads up: there is some harsh language that may not be appropriate for younger listeners. The poem begins with DJ’s mother, who everyone calls, Mama Vic.

MAMA VIC: She was a tomboy.

NARRATOR: She’s always been a tomboy, Mama Vic says,

MAMA VIC: Mouthy. Runnin’ the roads. Not comin’ home.

NARRATOR: and as she speaks DJ slicks back her yellow mane into a ponytail where it rats,

DJ: Where’s the brush?

DAUGHTER: I don’t know

DJ: (singing) Brush out the naps…

NARRATOR: her slight thighs packed into tight khakis and her chest
lost in a baggy green workshirt from the Hess,

DAUGHTER: She don’t take the time to brush it.

DJ: It always be in a bun.

NARRATOR: no makeup, all attitude, one hand grabbing her imaginary dick and the other ripe with gasoline, newly evicted,

MAMA VIC: You know what, I don’t want them to live in a shelter again. You gotta watch what you do with my grandchildren.

(door opening)

GIRL: Ma, Ma, look, look. (annoying recorder toot) Lookit. I got it!

DJ: Alright poppy, no.

NARRATOR: her lazy eye wandering over the Babel of seven kids
now occupying her mother’s living room—

DJ: (annoying recorder toot) Can you stop with that frikin’ godforsaken thing.

MAMA VIC: DJ’s my baby and always will be my baby.

DJ: I’m her bitch.

NARRATOR: My bitch, Mama Vic calls her, Vic: my baby bitch—and when this bitch rages,

DJ: What do you think this is? Go put my food back in the refrigider.

NARRATOR: the woman who made her daughters pick their own switch
for a bare-bottomed whuppin’ she deemed The Peabody Special
takes her grandkids in, ambles toward the ailing
couch to pick out their nits with a comb.
DJ spits into her phone, Dat bitch better step back
or I’ll beat her ass, hangs up, lights another Newport
as her name surely immolates in the mouth of the girl
on the other end of the line,

[sizzling] [pan scraping]

NARRATOR: and the children scream [Mommy!!!] over three porkchops and a slab of mac and cheese she’s fixed after her shift, [Not fair!] her anger a fast-rising balloon in this room

DJ: Wash your hands before you deal with my food.

NARRATOR: where her mother’s Madonna of the Dolphins [TV sound under]
opens her porcelain arms over the television to bless
Maury Povich and his inglorious guests.

[MAURY SHOW UP AND OUT]

[phone ring]

HAIRCUTTER: Cutting Place, yeah…

NARRATOR: Days later, DJ will fidget in the pumped-up vinyl chair

HAIRCUTTER: You got beautiful curls that nobody can see

NARRATOR: contemplating her wet hair like a favorite pet

DJ: Rats nest.

NARRATOR: or maybe cursing it just for being there,

HAIRCUTTER: In all reality, do you like to wear your hair down?

DJ: (sarcastic) yeah…

HAIRCUTTER: you do.

NARRATOR: sour because she knows that when the snips come, [snip] they come fast, [snip]

HAIRCUTTER: how old are you Deej? How old are you?

DJ: Yo, you go downhill. Shhhhhhh.

NARRATOR: they will cut and cut like her tongue can cut, [snip] [snip]

DJ: Damn, that’s a lot of hair

NARRATOR: faster than the cry of any child who may need her, [snip] her mother’s glower, [snip] her temper shorter than summer;

DJ: You know what? I look like my daughter.

HAIRCUTTER: Well you just bitched about being 32. How old is your daughter?

DJ: Fifteen.

HAIRCUTTER: Well, what’s ‘smatter with that?

NARRATOR: in her mind revs a van filled with dollars of gas and clothes in the back,

DJ: I just want to give up and run away.

NARRATOR: a narrowing list of houses she could run to

DJ: Give up on my house, give up on the kids. But I can’t give up on them.

NARRATOR: and the narrowing roads she might drive to reach that beautiful fair-haired girl she was before her years as a woman—

DJ: And every morning when I wake up and they’re out there arguing and fighting, that’s more of a reason for me not to give up.

NARRATOR: years which, [sweep] after the cut is over, she will sweep into a dustpan with the length of a broom.

DJ: Only the strong shall survive, my grandma said. And I’m one of them.

[sweep] [music from salon trails out quietly]

HOST OUT: DJ Guerin of Troy, New York. Susan B.A. Somers-Willet write the poem “The Cutting Place.” Lu Olkowski produced the story. “In Verse” is a part of MQ2, an initiative of AIR, the Association of Independents in Radio, Inc. with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The project was created in partnership with Virginia Quarterly Review and originally aired on Studio 360.

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