Off the Cuffs: Poetry by and about the Police

by Jackie Sheeler (Editor), Bob Holman (Foreword by)

Overview

On a daily basis police save lives, take lives, and risk their own lives. This is the first collection that allows us to see this: police officers not just as brutalisers or heroes but as complicated human beings in a position that is sometimes terrifying, sometimes rewarding and often questionable. It is this exploration of the dynamic point of understanding that makes Off The Cuffs unique. Existing books on police and policing give us a single point-of-view, a black and white story that portrays cops as either saints or villains. Divided into four sections - Eyewitnesses, Insiders, Victims & Perpetrators, and Dreamers - Off The Cuffs gives us a diversity of voices, telling stories of fear, apprehension, love, brutality, death, sorrow, joy, hope and resolve. Out of this multiplicity of voices: convicts, police, bike messengers and established poets such as Charles Simic, Martin Espada, Kevin Young and Colette Inez - emerges a dialogue showing us the infinite shades of blue that surround the profession and the profession's relationship to the society they are sworn to protect.Off The Cuffs adds an important and unheard piece to this body of work: the usually disparate voices of cops, prisoners and everyone in between engaging with one another within the pages of one book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781887128810
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	03/01/2003
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.04(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.74(d)

About the Author

Jackie Sheeler is a lifelong New Yorker and a lifelong juggler: poet, performance artist, songwriter, wordrocker, publisher, blogger, producer and webmaster. Her work has been widely anthologized in New York Quarterly, Rattapallax, Painted Bride Quarterly, Phoebe, Slant, and many other journals. She has taught workshops at The Writer's Voice, as well as at drug rehabs and prisons (which led to her holding for a time the title "Poet Laureate of Riker's Island").

Table of Contents

	Foreword	ix
I	Eyewitnesses	1
	Introduction	3
	What the Policeman Told Me	5
	Eyes	9
	Hotel, New York City	10
	The Arrest	11
	Untitled	12
	Objet D'Art	15
	Coffee Break	16
	Criminal Court	17
	Fury Selection	18
	Pantoum	19
	Target Practice	20
	On Some Streets	21
	Two Crimes	22
	Summer Solstice, New York City	23
	Graveyard Shift	25
	Logic of Fate	26
	Crayola Wars	27
	You And Me, Charlie (Excerpt)	28
	(WTO Freewrite)	29
	Dalhousie	32
	Rumours of Police	33
	Hiding Place	35
	Found Poem	36
	Charles F. Kelley	37
	Father: A Life in Blue Counts	38
	My Brother, A Cop	40
	Fall of Ninety	41
	In Uniform	42
	On My Way to the Poetry Slam	43
	Corner	46
	The Spectacle	48
	5XPlus	50
	The Great Flower Bust	52
	Untitled	53
	Tomkins Square Park, May 1, 1990	54
	Police Blotter	56
	Deer Prudence	58
	Sweet Streams in Spanish Harlem	61
	Halloween	62
	If Looks Could	65
	Confluence Becomes Me	66
II	Victims & Perpetrators	69
	Introduction	71
	Victims	73
	Night Shift on the Poisonous World	75
	Rookie	77
	The Cop Who Rides Alone	78
	Inside	80
	Willieworld (Excerpt)	82
	Off Like a Glove	83
	Body in New Fersey Not Missing Woman's	86
	Weeping Walls	87
	Married to a Cop	89
	On the Beat	90
	Mining For Eureka	91
	Lingo	93
	The Great Doubters of History	94
	The Pulse of the City	96
	Skin Gamezz (Po-Po Bluezz)	100
	LC	101
	Road Test	103
	Above a Darkened Bed	104
	Baby J	105
	Pigasus	107
	Letter My Dad Never Gave Me	108
	First Day in El Barrio	111
	The Wall	113
	Playing Guns in West Duluth	115
	Walking With Wild Horses	116
	Culture	121
	Falling Body	124
	Untitled #3	125
	The Town Where He Lived	127
	Ex-Cop Slain in Motel	129
	NYPD Blues	130
	Retiring	131
	Ride-Along	134
	On His Last Tour	136
	Perpetrators	139
	All 4-1	141
	A Pantoum for Sergeant Koon	144
	South Central Cheap Thrills	146
	The Interrogation	149
	Our Sons	151
	Picture of a Cop's Wife	153
	Nigger Reflex	154
	John Burge, Retired	155
	Roes and the Night Stick	158
	Street Justice	159
	An Operation	160
	Working Narcotics	162
	What Happened This Week	165
	For Henry Dumas	168
	Brooklyn South Blues	170
	Have You Seen Me	171
	Untitled #2	173
	Defacement {1983}	174
	Ode to the Unfortunate Ones	176
	S.H.U.	179
	Nonviolent Resistance and a Cow	180
	Freedom of Speech	181
	I'm a Poet, Damn It!	182
	Festival on 102nd Street	184
	Sacred Land	186
	Psalm for Equations	188
	Rudy Awakening	189
	The Voice on the Subway	190
	The Sign in My Father's Hands	192
	Cops & Robbers 2	194
	Compassion	196
	The Noble Speech	198
	Stopped by Cops	201
	Arrested	202
	The Story So Far	203
	Blackman Brotherman & the Highway Patrolman	205
III	Insiders	211
	Introduction	213
	On Giving a Poetry Reading at Arthur Kill Correctional Facility	215
	The Guard	216
	The Semipermanent Gate List	217
	Guarded (Dropping Daddy Off at Jail)	218
	Prison/Clouds	220
	Come and Take Me	221
	C Block (Excerpt from "The Prisons")	223
	The Gates (Excerpt)	224
	From The Cinnamon Bay Sonnets	226
	Teaching in Prison	227
	Slow Notes, Found Rhythms	230
	Ultimate Aphrodisiac	231
	Dead Man Walking	232
	Commencement	234
	C.O.	236
	Plea for a Captive	238
	Last Night in Film Class	239
IV	Dreamers	241
	Introduction	243
	He Looks the Other Way	245
	Security and Peace	247
	Cop	249
	Missing in Action	250
	A Curse on the Denton Cops, the Lot of Them	251
	Law & Order	252
	A Date with Officer Belding	253
	Most Wanted Man	254
	Life of a Police Lover	255
	Landscape with Usual Suspect	257
	Wheeler Avenue	258
	Not On My Beat	259
	The Cop Gun	260
	Cops Care	261
	Slumnight	262
	The Daily News	263
	Cop & Robber (Song)	264
	Nightmare 9	265
	Forensic	266
	First Sight	267
	Long Day's Journey	268
	Please Stay Inside Your Car!	270
	That's My Lucky Number?	272
	Toilers From the Sea (Excerpt)	273
	Kevlar City	275
	Afterword: Post-Terror	277
	Acknowledgments	278

Editorial Reviews

""This amalgam of sometimes tender, often brutal and always engrossing short poems explores the relationships between cops and civilians, victims and protectors, perpetrators and oppressors."

From the Publisher