Running Down Broken Cement

by Nancy Scott

Running Down Broken Cement is a collection of forty-six narrative poems inspired by Scott's direct involvement with homelessness, child abuse, adoption and foster care while employed by the State of New Jersey and also in the non-profit sector.

70 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2014

Reviews

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I purchased this book after it was recommended by a friend. The subject matter, the trials of adopted children, was of interest to me. Poetry of witness is also of interest to me and I haven't read much of it lately so I took the plunge. However, I would, after reading this, make a distinction between poetry of witness and political poetry. Poetry of witness tells someone's story. Political poetry makes a statement about larger sociopolitical situations. This book does both. It covers the micro (witness) and the macro (sociopolitical).

The poems themselves are rooted in people's stories. As a social worker, Scott has put herself in the way of many, many stories. Since she has also adopted children, she has put herself in the middle of the stories of others as well as witnessing. Sometimes the witnessing is direct (a story is told to her) and sometimes she skirts the fringes of it (the implications of a basement with blacked out windows that's full of animals).

However, the structure of the book and the nature of the stories imply a political message. Part 1 of the book is about young people who have lived traumas, have gone into foster care and haven't done well. If I would fault this book it would be that it didn't tell any success stories and surely there must have been some. But she is focused on showing us how things are failing--and not just the people but the system that has been put in place to save them.

Part 2 consists of stories from Scott's experience in a rental subsidy program, apparently as an evaluator. The political aspect of this volume comes partly from accumulation but also from thinking about whether the snake of the poetry is swallowing its tail, whether it's a closed loop. In this case, it obviously is. Though the characters don't repeat, we can see that the dysfunctional people produced by abuse and the foster system quite naturally end up being the dysfunctional people needing subsidies.

So the volume begs all kinds of questions: Where are we going wrong? In how many ways are we going wrong? Why can we put people in space yet harbor such medieval social pockets as those described in this volume? It shines a light in dark places in a way that reminded me of Claudia Rankine's Citizen. And both books are asking us, as citizens, to look squarely at the body politic, without the sugar coating and rose-colored glasses that "the richest nation on earth" assumes.

The methods of Rankine and Scott are very different. Rankine is clearly an academic and Scott is a surfer in the ocean of other people's stories and lives. Rankine's book is about bodies and how we politicize them. Scott's is more about pain and how we don't want to see it and create structures supposedly intended to fix it but instead tend to sweep it under the rug only to crop up elsewhere.

For the most part, Scott's poems don't wow, but they are solid. This is a book in which accumulation is key. It is more than the sum of its parts (the same is true of Rankine's Citizen). This is a "new and selected" volume and its contents were clearly chosen for effect.
There are a lot of prostitutes in this volume so there's a subtext of sexual politics as well, not confined to women since some of them are transgender.

Here is a poem from the second section:

The Hardest Thing

he tells me about being out
is knowing how and when
to explain to his girlfriend
that he'd killed a man
that he'd borrowed a gun
so he could feel cool
that he'd shot the guy
in a spontaneous street brawl
that he'd spent 10 years
in prison, even though
the dead man's mother
testified at the trial
that her son was no good
and she was glad he was dead

That is one of the starker, plainer of the poems. Most of them are more nuanced than that, but even in "The Hardest Thing" we are left wondering which part of the poem is the hardest to face from our point of view.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scott is a poet of witness, and she does not turn her head from the hard and often ugly truth of the disenfranchised. Her narrative poetry comes from her background as an adoptive and foster mother, as well as her professional role as a caseworker with abused and neglected children. She states in her preface that she writes to “give voice to all the children and adults who struggle daily against the odds.” In addition to children, Scott gives voice to the poor, drug users, people living with HIV, homeless, and immigrants.

The subject matter of these poems is difficult, and I recommend reading only a few poems at a time so as to not be overwhelmed. In these well-crafted poems, Scott uses unique similes and metaphors. Her lines are conversational, yet fresh. She calls attention to the fact that the social service system is what fails, not the child.
He slipped through the cracks,
past allegation and ink
smudged in a six-digit number.
(Seven-Year-Old Boy Found Dead In Plastic Storage Bin, 2003)

The title of the book comes from a line in a poem about aging out of foster care. Andre was shuffled from foster home to foster home, always “the kid with the different last name.”
One ordinary day, he heard words
like the slash of a box cutter,
Your dad’s in jail, your mom’s been sober,
We’re taking you home.
This skinny twelve-year-old bolted,
ran barefoot down broken cement
(Eighteenth Birthday)

My favorite poem is one that will ring true for anyone who has interacted with a troubled teen. When the phone call comes, the response is a juxtaposition of relief that the child is safe, then the resignation and cynicism that results from years of manipulation. The poem begins with the call “from a rehab center/third one this year.”
Silence.
I calculate. It’s October.
This call will cost me sneakers,
sweats, a winter jacket,
boxed and mailed.
(When Balfour Calls)