Dew on the Trashcans, Osiris Atomized

The first poem in a new cut-up project

Image of the asteroid Bennu; Proust on his deathbed; trashcans; David Bowie making cut-ups

I’ve often messed around with cut-ups, and I’ve been aware of this method since I was probably 15 and reading about William Burroughs. He had adopted the idea from Tristan Tzara¹, and while it was often considered a parlor trick, Burroughs used it with an intensity of vision that hadn’t been seen before.

The thing about cut-ups is that they have source ma…