The response can be a melee of broken broom handles, telephone receivers, socks with bars of soap inside or knives whittled from sharpened toothbrushes.

I once read of a Zen monk who said a broken broom was not an imperfect broom, but two perfect broom halves.

The squad handed over the items and he tied them on the ends of the broken broom handles.

There were black eyes, a few lost teeth, and broken brooms, but no broken bones.

One of the prisoners in the I-tier attacks a guard with a broken broom handle while cleaning his cell.

Tom then hands the broken broom back to the humiliated housemaid.

A piece of split wooden shelf, maybe a broken broom handle.

The floor was littered with rubbishbundles of newspapers, a galvanised iron bucket with a large dent in one side, a broken broom, and a cluster of small oddments and trash.

It was Aug. 9, 1997, when Mr. Louima was sodomized with a broken broom handle inside the bathroom of the 70th Precinct station house in Flatbush.