Slam Poetry

April 2, 2009

“Two Bits” by Katie F-SPosted by

Katie F-S

TWO BITS

I got a haircut.
I got them all cut.
I cut it all off, my absent big-cat mane,
my main missing link to my femininity,
and I think my mother is pissed.
I am shorn like a ewe, and you
cannot imagine how I haven’t missed
my lioness’s tresses.

Her dead-end objection, devoid of inflection, insists:
“You had such pretty hair, you had sunset hair, you had
tangled-knotty-curly hair that obscured an auburn sky.”
But Ma, now it’s funky hair, now it’s easy hair, now I can
wash my hair six times a night and it will dry exactly right
every sudsy time.
Now it’s a radical liberal political rhyme. Now it’s scalprooted
poetry: the less that’s there, the more significant my statement.
Now it reflects the unrestrainable, irreplaceable,
personable, personal
ME.

She lectures like a sonorous sewing machine:
“You look like a boy.”
Mom, you mean I look like a dyke.
I knocked you off-kilter and the ponytailed filter
that allowed your perspective of
nearly-straight Kate
has been clipped. The closet is clear-cut. My slate is full up
with this silent scrawlin’—I will not let you pretend to
ignore the forest that’s fallen from my face.
I am stark, I am satiated in this suddenly-sparse
space, I am uncomplicated without
cornrows of cautious trees. I am caged neither by
the scabs of a boy nor
the arms of a man.
I am free.
Besides, Big Mama, dig my breasts,
dig my hips,
dig this sarcastic, cynical, shit-eating grin pussyfooting
across my lips—dig this salty-sugarshockin’ stanza, then
hold my green dragon eye and tell me, ain’t I a woman, Mother
whip-strong and smart,
ain’t I?

Her dialtone diatribe plods on:
“You’ll be alone for the rest of your life.”
Mother.
O Mother.
Last night I discovered the shape of my head.
Last night I shed my last unearned vanity—
what a travesty, that barretted keratin is
beheld as beauty, but my fuzzy silhouette is
insufferably unlovable. Should I
shave and snip and twist and grow
into this newest feminist
Emancipated Liberated Womanhood Mold?
Should I hold my chin against my chest in bald, bold penance?
I have taken the path less split, less ending,
I have taken to befriending
each brief breeze that breaks
across my crown.
I will not take this shit lying down.
I will not regard independence as an impediment.
Ain’t no one can prevent this
witchy warrior invocation:
Today I stave off cellular, soul-ular starvation.

She lets go of her breath like a derelict daughter:
“I just want someone to love you.”
Ah. But I savor that which I lack—
for hair, like a parent’s favor,
usually grows back.

—from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
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March 31, 2009

“The Day Jam Master Jay Died” by Kevin CovalPosted by

Kevin Coval

THE DAY JAM MASTER JAY DIED

woke unsure how to pay rent
check hadn’t come in from county
too many months living like artist
with no net to break the fall

went to my brother’s class at Kelvyn Park
taught Luis Rodriguez in freshman honors
two poems about neighborhood folk / one
heroin-addicted guitar player and the other
man angry in Humboldt Park killing a car

gave a reading at Wright College
theater full of aging teens and faculty
after the set this skinny white kid comes over
gives me props for a poem about graff writers
i ask if he writes, ELOTES he says
no shit i say i’ve been digging you
for years over red and brown line tracks
first seen you up on that truck at Chicago
and Halsted / that’s me he said

ate with Eboo downtown near Loyola
he lectures to a class of grad students
about discovery and inheritance / he is brilliant
in describing our engagement with modernity
we encounter the vastness of cultural practice
and build bridges back home he says

i think of Isabel / young writer at Kelvyn Park
Bindi between her eyebrows / picture of Lady Guadalupe
in her notebook / she reads the Bhagavad Gita in Spanish
with her Aunt who teaches Yoga at the Church
and i tell this class my path back to Judaism
was paved in breakbeats

walk to the train
get home / call my girl
she lives in Brooklyn
on my bed / she tells me

Jam Master Jay was shot
his head spilled onto the control panels
of his studio in Queens

it’s fucked up she said
it’s fucked up i said

said we’d talk tomorrow
hung up and my apartment was silent
like there was no music in my apartment
my apartment was silent like my childhood
memories silenced tonight like the music

-eulogy-

Chuck D said John Lennon was killed today
and i miss Pac and Big more than ever
i am Holden Caulfield watching hope break in the stalls of public bathrooms
i am Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth reminiscing over the fallen body of b-boy
Trouble T-Roy and dying hip-hop birth sites falling wayside to the pounding beats
of green-fisted real estate agents and the hard crack rock drug wars america wages
on her children creating culture with turntables

we have been here before

and i want Scott La Rock back to break up all this violence
i want Big L to throw a peace sign up in the air and DREAM
and Ramon and all the other graffiti artists killed in the line of their calling
to come back and bomb the World Trade Center
with the biggest streaked wildstyles the sky has ever seen:
a mural for the forgotten spray painted on the clouds
a gold chain cast across the sun
a single shell toe held up in the air

it was Jam Master Jay who introduced me to the culture
who soothed me over the bridge of whiteness and rock
it was his cool lean arms wrapped around chest / head back
in black fedora / no laces in his adidas / he stole electricity
to light the block parties / reparations / for all the stars exploded
before he could play the last song they requested / he’d send shine
beams on vinyl / into the distant homes of the sun starved
and let us bask in his light scratching scarce sounds / found
digging the landfills / of america’s sonic consciousness

it’s not bad meaning bad but bad meaning
it’s not bad meaning
it’s not bad meaning
it’s not

—from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
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March 27, 2009

“Every Element is Relevant” by Marlon O. CareyPosted by

Marlon O. Carey

EVERY ELEMENT IS RELEVANT

Every element is relevant
And significant
Like a herd of African elephants
Marching slowly through the tenements
Or similar to seeds submerged in sediment
I eventually emerge to serve as evidence
A phantom menace
Like my lame ass ex-girlfriend
Who attempted to insult my intelligence
But she was merely a victim of her parents’ inherited prejudice
And furthermore she was jealous of this
My apparent penchant for dispensing sentences
With relentless effortlessness
But nevertheless
Now I am independent
And reluctant to discuss those tragic events
I used to stay bent to prevent myself from venting these sentiments
But now my regimen includes a true testament of my existence
Engineered with elegance and executed with eloquence
I’m on a quest for excellence
And rather than follow trends
I’d rather set precedents
Like maybe the first Jamaican-born American
Elected president
But EVERY ELEMENT IS RELEVANT
So now I’m
Constantly counting on consonants
Trying to crack the constraints of cold cement
This is more than just a lyrical experiment
This is mental medicine I’m dispensing
Inside your minds
I’m fencing with ignorance
Hoping I get a chance to displace it
And replace it with statements like:
EVERY ELEMENT IS RELEVANT
You can’t erase if you don’t face your latent racism
So now I’m searching for those subtle similarities
Between myself and the Chinamen in Tiananmen
Or lower class lesbian ladies living in Lebanon
And I’m finding them
Wedged between the cracks
Embedded in the lies they tell me about my melanin
To hell with them!
Racism war and corrupted governments
All that I can recommend is to keep peace prevalent
And climb the mountaintops
And keep on telling them that EVERY ELEMENT IS RELEVANT
So while you’re strolling through the tenements
Pondering those sacred elephants remember this
I hate to sound repetitive
But every bit of our existence
Is compounded by essential percentages
Of positive and negative so let it live
Blood bones and brain matter we are all relatives
And all relevant and all heaven sent
And all majestic instances of intensity
We are all meant to be mingling here amid indents at ease
Subjects suggestively strapped to our predicates
We are all delicate
and all dedicated to the liberation of all continents
So keep this thought prominent
Memorize its every consonant
No matter what persuasion you may happen to represent
Black, White, Latino, Asian
affluent or indigent
EVERY ELEMENT IS RELEVANT

—from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
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March 24, 2009

“Piraha” by Grace BruendermanPosted by

Grace Bruenderman

PIRAHA

Somewhere in Brazil
near the Amazon River
a tribe called the Piraha
lives and quivers
runs and slithers
as they curl and cling
to the Amazon bank
they sing as much as they talk
they “ohhhm” as much as they walk.

Because the Piraha have no language
for numbers or feelings
just colors and singing
and chanting and breathing.
“I love, I hate, I miss”
don’t exist.
I feel I feel they must
hate with no way of saying it
love with no way of praying it.
They’re forced to look to love
and if they hurt they must scream
and sometimes I wish we were the same.

Because right now I’m trying
to piece into words
a pain in my stomach that cannot
be a verb, and saying “I hurt”
isn’t going to cover it
this time.

I want everyone to see
my sick slick squished
blood ball of a heart
b-b-b-bounce from its socket
like the rocket that it was
ripped stripped from deep rich soil
watch my blood boil
and know that there are no words for this…
but I’ll try.

William Carlos Williams,
can you tell them
that there is no poetry but in things,
that there are no ideas but in things.
And if I looked how I felt inside
you’d have to break my teeth and
watch me still smile wide.
And if I scream,
is that still an idea?
Is that still po-e-try?
I have seen more poetry
than I have ever heard.

I see this rag-covered man
pushing a shopping cart
full of cans
trying to make
end-to-ends meet.
My eighty-six-year-old neighbor
planting geraniums and going crazy.
A chubby little sixth-grade girl
sitting at her lunch table
waiting for no one.
A boy letting go of my hand
telling me
he can’t hold me anymore
and there were and are
no words for that.

I am Pira-ha-HA.
Singing more than I talk
ooohming more than I walk.
Because sometimes the way you say it
say way you it
the way you ohh chh ohm
the way you tss-tss-tss
the way you pop pop pop
is more important than
what you say.

There’s a man,
limping down
the side of the road
missing an arm
trying hard not to starve,
and I both pity and envy him,
because at least his pain is visible.
A National Geographic photographer
could click-clack-attack his pain
with a double-wide lens
(t-t-t-t-tss)
and the whole world might frown
for a moment,
scratch their brows for a moment
the whole world might
understand for a moment.

There is a tribe in Brazil
who feels too,
but they have no words,
they can only show you
they sing more than they walk
they ohm more than they talk,
and sometimes we do too.

And we do not always need
the words, the photos, or a centerfold
to prove it.
So, for the love of god,
ohm, ohhhhhhm it.

—from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
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March 22, 2009

“Mandate” by Roger Bonair-AgardPosted by

Roger Bonair-Agard

MANDATE
            after Patrick Rosal

To laugh at weaker boys (or at least the less sharp-tongued)
    to kick ball till the moon rose
    or something vital bled—we lived
To wait like predator
    for the first note of a slow jam
    to grind ourselves into the wall
    with a pretty girl between us
    and make sure our boys were watching

We were tropical     suave     post-colonial oil money niggahs
and we had to do well—in all things
    in Latin
    in the First Queen’s Royal College Scout band
    in talking shit
    and especially in football
so we practiced memorizing where
our defenders were
so we could look the other way
as we went past them
cuz it was only cool
if you made it seem effortless

we were sophisticates like that
looking for immortality in the tales of others
and most of our friends were still alive

To buy two sno-cones from George
    whose rickety cart parked outside
    the school each day
To have the cones stacked with extra syrup and condensed milk
To gather around the cart
    because George always had sensible shit to say

To follow that with the hottest     spiciest
    doubles from the doubles-man behind the cafeteria
    who built two multi-level homes
    off the profits from our purchases
To laugh at that irony

To pick on the faggot boys
    because we wanted our fathers to think we were men
To join the new dance-craze revolution
To stop traffic on Frederick Street
    just to see Doc, Scientist and Froggie
    spin on vinyl, pop-lock, head-stand
    electric-boogie, dead-man

To sit on the steps
    of the downtown shopping plaza
    and stare at the beauty of our women
To believe at sixteen
    that they were our women

To welcome satellite TV and music videos
    like it was God
    because who can see the future anyway
    It was 1984
and we were busy looking good
mimicking everything we saw

To go watch Gip play better than the rest of us
to see him collect the ball on the outside
of his left foot     count the on-rushing defender’s footsteps
and slide the ball deftly through his legs
while looking the other way
    effortless like that

Our bodies hadn’t begun to betray us yet
Kirk and Gregory and Rudy and Peter were still alive
Dave still had his legs
and the worst thing wasn’t     not doing well
only seeming     like you were trying too hard

—from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
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March 19, 2009

“Can Slam Poetry Matter?” by Susan B.A. Somers-WillettPosted by

Susan B.A. Somers-Willett

CAN SLAM POETRY MATTER?

It wasn’t too long ago that poetry critics were decrying the decline of American poetry’s public audience. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Joseph Epstein and Dana Gioia declared poetry dead to the average reader (the former in his essay “Who Killed Poetry?” and the latter in “Can Poetry Matter?”). Aided by the rise of MFA programs and the insularity of the academy, poetry, they argued, had been forced into an academic ghetto. Both critics reasoned that if poetry were to be resuscitated from its deathbed, it would have to present a new public face to the general reader.

At the same time critics were lamenting its death, poetry was indeed finding a new kind of public venue. In 1984, in a working-class Chicago barroom called the Get Me High Lounge, an ex-construction worker by the name of Marc Smith was experimenting with poetry and cabaret-style performance art. When he ran out of material to complete a set during an ensemble show, Smith stumbled upon a competitive format that has lasted two decades. He let the audience judge—at first with boos and applause, and later with numeric scores—the poems performed on stage. Two years later, Marc Smith took his poetry competition to The Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, one of Al Capone’s favorite haunts. It was there on July 25, 1986, among the clinking of beer bottles and the thick haze of cigarette smoke, that the Uptown Poetry Slam was born.

Simply put, a poetry slam is a competitive poetry reading in which poets perform their own writing for scores. Slams are open and democratic in nature; anyone who wishes to sign up for the competition can. The scores, which range from 0.0 to 10.0, are assigned by volunteer judges (typically five of them) selected from the audience. The highest and the lowest scores for a poem are dropped and the three remaining scores are added together for a maximum total of 30 points. There is also a time limit of three minutes and ten seconds per performance; poets may and do go over this limit, but a time penalty is assessed and figured into their scores. Poets are also restricted in how they perform; no “props, costumes, or animal acts” are allowed. Musical accompaniment, except for that which poets can make with their own body, is also usually excluded. Beyond that, poets are free to use the microphone and any other items on stage to perform their poems. At stake are titles, small cash prizes, and even gag prizes. From the winners of local and regional slams, representative teams from cities across the U.S. and Canada (and some international teams) are certified to compete at the National Poetry Slam, which takes place annually in August.

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