every season I compete with it.
a few seasons in I write the one I finally mean on a subject
previously too scared to touch
Ironically about a time I was too scared to touch
(and in both cases I didn’t speak up
until)
I touch stage, kill the poem
the audience exactly the right kind of uncomfortable looking inward at themselves
I walk off stage proud of looking inward at myself.
I hear my scores and they are scoring my trauma
I get 7.4 7.6 7.8, 8.2
I get a healthy dose of retraumitization, and the sickening sense that I should’ve held that poem longer in my notebook than my mouth.
A man up next out scores my poem with a lyrical one
content elusive but sounded cool
masculine voice
filling the space in ways mine can’t
holding judges until they’re comfortable
holding judges the same way he holds his emotions
so tightly
they forget their insecurities.
the judges forget to judge themselves.
every season I see men win slam
after slam with performative restraint
with poems that are sometimes striking
sometimes just loud
I watch them score higher when a woman’s story sops sloppy from their teeth.
And me?
I’m the white poet
who is also fucking up-
talking about race like I have it all figured out
and I outscore poets of
color like this with poems about equity and call it a Friday.
The audacity of me doesn’t hit me for years
‘Cause the 9.8 9.7 9.9 and a 10
reinforce the whole thing weekly
and the audience members leave happy
and the poets leave septa
leave tokens
wonder why they feel so spent-
isn’t poetry supposed to be healing?
Not always.
these lessons are
always
reiterating,
that when I cry in a voice
that isn’t quite mine
I get more points
so I do that
(a lot)
but employ different metaphors every time I do it
reference war though I’ve never seen it
talk about race rehearsed & sloppy
And this is how I get the high 9s
this is is how I place 2nd in the slam
stomp on a gentle craft in someone else’s shoes
stumble away from attempts to talk authentically about myself and instead can my cadence
fit a form
Instead play jack o’ lantern and carve out
the pulp
some else’s voice I hijacked
to make space for my candle
of a perspective.
I go to nationals this year and it is the same shit.
A famous team of straight poets
references gay culture for points in a joke poem and everyone’s laughing but the gay poets
‘cause the joke was made at our expense
and I’m suddenly mad at myself for never writing anything about being queer as a queer
and even madder I can’t seem to lend myself the grace I give others to question my own gender off stage let alone on it
Why this,
oh right.
Probably because
homophobia and transphobia are as American as apple pie and
slam poetry might as well be too.
two slams in I start writing my poems to please the audience and not myself
to please the judges
Who are just people knowing most people deal with toxic levels of implicit bias (present company not excluded)
i mean snap judgement stereotypes and i know a human brain makes so many snap judgments all day long
It seeks threat
judges for understanding via safety
And you could argue that snap judgements keep us surviving but at the poetry slam these just throw the scores sideways instead of pushing the culture forward.
Slam culture seeks to exist outside toxicity but exists within it and this is product of our society,
a failed process,
another toxic thing claiming to cleanse
there were seasons where I claimed
to heal myself here in all this chaos
And at all costs and in any voice
that won me near thirties
but not anymore.
& 