By Emily Kirschbaum
Last week, I wrote about getting up the nerve to enter myself at my first poetry slam. This week, part 2.
The room was tiny. There was a row of old thrift-store velvet sofas in the front, and mismatched folding chairs and bar stools in the rows behind it. The lights were off except for two spotlights on the stage, and dimmed red lights surrounding it. It felt like a Prohibition-era bar. I sat right in front of a space heater, blowing warm air on my back as everyone else in the room shivered with their coats on. Outside the velvet curtains that separated the venue from the waiting area, was a young guy standing behind a scratched wooden bar with a gallon of cheap Chardonnay and Sangria that he was selling by the clear plastic cup for $4. As the host asked for all of those who were chosen to slam tonight to meet outside, I threw away my empty cup with traces of Sangria in the cracks. I had bought it immediately after getting there, to calm the nerves.
“Ok, so here’s the deal. For those of you who know me, tonight I’m going to be an a**hole, I’m sorry, it’s my job. Here’s the rules. Each poem has to be maximum 3 minutes long. I will let you continue talking until 3 minutes and 10 seconds, but you will get ¼ of a point knocked off for every 10 seconds you go over. Once you get to 3 minutes and 25 seconds, I will literally steal the mic out from under you and hit you with it. You understand? You have to learn to edit your poems! Also, don’t come in here with some poem about flowers and daisies that you wrote in your first poetry class and stand up and compete here. This is a competition, this is not an open mic. So…just know that. Alright, here’s the order of the slammers, remember your place on the list and correct me if I say your name wrong.”
I let my mind wander as he read off the names on the list. The poem I was about to read in front of this room full of people was a poem I had written in my first creative writing class. Sh*t.
“Emily Kur-tch-bum?”
“Kursh-bom.”
“Alright, thank you. Number 9.”
When he finished, we all put our hands in the center like the high school basketball team and bounced the mass of palms. “1 – 2 – 3 – PIGEON!” One tiny voice in the back screamed, “POETRY! No? Didn’t work? Alright….”
I sat back down on my bar stool and obsessively read over my poem. A definition poem I wrote in my class last year. I was planning on reading my favorite poem, the one that made me want to read at a slam in the first place, but it was too long. Five minutes when I practiced.
The lights dimmed further, and the guest poet, Shira Erlichman, an up-and-coming poet from Brooklyn, took the stage. I was blown away, mesmerized, and in love. Her poems gave me the goosebumps, and her cool personality made me wish I was her friend. She reminded me of my poetry teacher at Hope College, my quirky writing partner from Texas, and the queen herself, Andrea Gibson. I could just picture Heather Sellers clapping me on the back, grasping my shoulders, and leaning her mouth to my ear with a whisper, “Poet, you are fabulous. You better get up there.”
Finally, it came to be my turn. I almost tripped over the mic cord before I got onstage. I stepped up onto the black-painted plywood stage and adjusted the microphone to my mouth. The faceless middle row of my fellow students screamed, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” I smiled and nodded, so as not to add to my time. Then I began with a loud and confident voice that I haven’t felt in a long time, “Her. Pronoun. Number 1. A Person You Couldn’t Look At Or Touch, As in….”
I continued and saw in my peripheral vision, Shira Erlichman, sprawled out on one of the velvet couches gasping at just the right moments, snapping along with each stanza, mouthing “wow” every once in a while. I heard other people “mmhmm” and “yeah, you know, girl!” as I shared this poem, this gut-wrenching poem, with this room. It was exhilirating. I felt the adrenaline rushing up my spine long after I had sat back down and gotten my losing scores which brought a clamor of “boos” from the crowd. It didn’t matter. I had missed the stage, the writing, the story-telling, the beauty for years; and now I knew how to get back on it. It was life-giving.
