In Seattle they have a saying: It's not about the points, it's about the POETRY. And yet poets from around the world flock to the Slams to read, to perform, and to share their work for points. It's a somewhat sadistic thing to do...to get on the mic and in three minutes or less (with a 10 second grace period) read the bloody ink of your soul to a group of strangers who may not get, may not like it, and might even hold up a score card that reads 0. And yet still there are some of us who have this strange compulsion to be heard, to get on stage, put it out there and hold our breath waiting for that first inkling of response, a laugh, a sigh, anything that says there is someone out there listening and understanding. And if we're lucky we'll get it just right and the judges who could be the anyone from Toni Morrison to some douche bag who has never read or written a poem in his or her entire life, will hold up a score card with the perfect 10. It's a high.
So after more than a full year of resisting this compulsion, I slammed tonight, in the city of my birth, Des Moines, Iowa with 16 other poets (because unlike Seattle they don't cap at 8) and I won! Since there were so many of us, we only did two rounds. The top 8 went on to round 2. I read Stupid Break Up Poem #46 and of course as a follow-up The Afro-Petting Zoo Is Closed: A Public Service Announcement In 3 Parts. And my mom was there to see me win. It was a good night.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
An Excerpt From Draft 9 of Ollieland...
It’s official. Summer is dead. I spent the morning digging the hole for the funeral pyre, as Solomon adorned the backyard with tiki torches and Mom prepared the corpse to be tied to a spit. Nothing says Labor Day like a Hawaiian Luau. By 6:00 p.m. I’ve been smelling pig for hours, watching its fat, succulent carcass rotate slowly above the hypnotic flames, its mouth full of blackened fruit.
“Ollie, it’s time to baste again,” Mom calls from an undetermined location within the house. I leave my cleaver stabbed through the heart of a pineapple and find the bucket of sacred pig sauce, a murky concoction made from fresh squeezed Valencia oranges, aged brandy, butter, and a blend of twenty six secret herbs and spices. I paint it on lengthwise from snout to tail, enjoying the tiny gasps and hisses as the juices sizzle against the fire. At least one of us doesn’t have to suffer in silence. The basting is hot work on a ruthlessly sticky day and I am tired and irritable. My only consolation is the pig smell saturating everything within a three block radius. It is a tangible aroma, so thick just inhaling deeply seems to leave a salty tangy meat taste in my mouth.
When it comes to holidays, it doesn’t matter which one, my mother has this incurable form of OCD which makes it physically impossible for her not to throw a party. The thing is, it’s never just a party. It can’t be simple: a few streamers and a Costco cake. No, it has to be some long, drawn out, Martha Stewart worthy extravaganza with enough gourmet food to feed a Haitian refugee camp. And as her faithful minion, bound by the seventeenth year of my indentured servitude, I am obligated to be by her side for all fifty two annual secular and religious celebrations, not to mention personal holidays like birthdays and anniversaries. It’s in my contract.
I remember my sister Jade’s ninth birthday with a shudder. Theme: Under the Sea. Everyone was dressed as their favorite mermaid (I was the dreaded Sea Witch Ursula) and then a band of musicians showed up wearing sea creature costumes. I was five and giant crabs roaming the backyard with portable steel drums was terrifying. I refused to leave the house. Then Dad had to give me the Hymlic because Mom thought it would be neat to freeze Ariel figurines inside the ice cubes floating in the blue punch. Yeah, it was fabulous. Who cares if I only almost died? It is an illness, but instead of getting quarantined or medicated, Mom gets to inflict her insanity on everyone and they love her for it. They show up in droves because my mother is the perfect hostess.
A good hostess is warm, caring, gracious, and welcoming. She gives the impression that the guest is the most important person in the world and that nothing is too much trouble to ensure their comfort and contentment. A good hostess is courteous to her guests, even if they are rude. She is detail oriented and adaptable to the needs of the situation, always ready with a back up plan. On a good day I am none of these things, and today is not a particularly good day, so I must fake it hard or do my best to be invisible or both. Mournful sigh.
Solomon rounds the corner carrying an ice chest.
“Where does this go?”
“Beneath the buffet table,” I point to the lavishly dressed table beside my workstation which is scattered with artistically slaughtered pineapples. I’ll need to clean that up before She comes back outside.
“God that smells amazing,” Solomon moans.
“Of course it does.”
By 7:00 p.m. the pineapple is curried, flambéd, and plated beautifully. It rests on the epic buffet between the lobster poofs and the green potato salad. The yard is already filling up with neighbors and family friends, mostly middle aged lesbians dressed in obnoxious dayglow flowered shirts and hell bent on congratulating me on beginning the last year of adolescence.
“Oh Olive Jane, look at you. You’re becoming such a woman,” Deborah tells me like I just got my rag and I’m in a fucking Judy Blume novel. Congratulations. You’ve got boobies and acne. The ugly duckling is now the black swan of womanly goodness, even though you’re still short and pudgy and nothing like your sister. Well you still have another year of high school. It could get better? Then she follows up with the million dollar question: “So which colleges are you applying to?”
Not the C word. Double sigh. Inhale, allow pig air to numb the annoyance. Must maintain the appropriate fake pleasant facade. Exhale, perfectly crafted lie: “I’m not going to college right away. I’m planning on taking next year off to find myself.” As if by some miracle I could ever actually lose myself.
“Well then what Olive Jane? What happens after your year off?”
Do I look like a fucking magic eight ball? I hate it when she calls me Olive Jane, like we’re all buddy buddy and it’s our thing that she gave me this stupid pet name. I want to tell her it’s Ollie or Olivia. Pick one. I only get Olivia Jane when I’m in big trouble. And Olive Jane? No one calls me that. It sounds like a dirty martini.
“I’ll keep you posted,” I tell her all sugary sweet, then let the platter of deviled eggs tilt forward just enough so that three creamy eggs slide off the edge and land with a splat on her shoes, egg side down. Hole in one. The fake look of concern masks my radiant snarky smile. I’m much too well house broken to tell Mom’s friends to fuck off, but I’ll egg their Birkenstocks and look sincerely apologetic while fetching a paper towel to wipe their toes with.
7:30 p.m. The pig is served. Solomon and Toni cart the beast to the carving station. My mother is poised, an opulent lae of fuchsia hibiscus around her neck, an oversized fork in one hand, an electric knife in the other. Vrrooom. Vrroooom. Come and get it. Though I’m salivating for a taste, as I watch the dissection my stomach begins to churn. Maybe it’s the realization that I’m not so far up the food chain. I could be that pig, happily minding my own pig business, blissfully oblivious to the impending doom, then whamo, dead and roasted so everyone can have a piece. I really don’t want to go to school tomorrow.
“Psst, Ollie.” Toni motions. “Light the torches.”
10:00 p.m. When it’s finally over and I’m alone again, I can still I feel the eyes pressing in on me from all sides. Stop looking at me. I quell the urge to break something, knowing I’ll just have to clean it up and it’s not worth it. I’ve got my manic hostess grin plastered to my face, but inside I’m seething, screaming at the top of my lungs with the volume on mute. LEAVE ME ALONE. This happens sometimes. If I can retreat fast enough, I can prevent the explosion. It hurts to breathe, even the luscious pig air feels stifling now, like a pig flavored blanket smothering me.
I move through the quiet darkness of the house, as far away from Mom and Toni as I can get. Up the stairs, past straight rows of framed family portraits: Mom, Dad, Jade, Malcolm, me. Smiling. Always smiling. Malcolm in his football uniform. Malcolm with his basketball team winning the State Championship. Jade in a midair split performing with the drill team. Jade crossing the finish line at a track meet. She is a winner too. Jade being crowned Homecoming Queen: a crowned and certified winner. I keep moving, past the ghost of family past, around the corner, through the spare room and up the last flight of stairs into the attic. I lock the door behind me; let the fake smile disintegrate, but the party induced panic remains.
She has to know how much I hate it: all the chatting, the cheek pinching, fielding nosy questions from people who haven’t been teenagers in so long they’ve actually tricked themselves into remembering high school as something fun. Haven’t they been reading the paper? Nothing is fun when you’re a casualty of war. I know they know, or at least they think they know all about it. It’s obvious by the furtive whispers and the sad faced pitying glances. I hear it in their voices as they tell me: “Your mom is so brave. You must be so proud.” But I am not proud. I’m exhausted. I’m covered in mosquito bites, spilled barbecue sauce, and lipstick prints from the really old women intent on kissing my cheeks and forehead because unlike everyone else my age, I’m still short enough for them to reach. I’m angry. I’m embarrassed and worst of all doomed to repeat the never ending story of my humiliation once more, again. I really, really don’t want to go to school tomorrow.
I need Al Green and a fresh canvas, badly. The floorboards creak beneath my bare feet. I inhale the warm inedible scent of cedar and sandalwood that clings to the attic asserting ownership of the space, a welcome relief from the siren song of pig. Lights. Cue the music. That’s better. The attic is my sanctuary. With my brother gone to college, my sister gone to New York and my dad just gone, there’s a whole lot of house and not a lot of people. I like it better this way, just me and Mom and now Toni. Mom finally agreed to let me convert the attic into an artist studio. It didn’t take much. I only had to get rid of some old junk and clean up the floors. I kept the tacky green seventies wall paper though, not that it’s very visible. The built in bookshelves are fully stocked with every art supply imaginable and almost every inch of wall is covered by paintings and collages and more paintings of various sizes and subject matters. The ceiling beams are strung with fairylights, tissue paper kites, homemade piñatas, and mobiles constructed from Christmas ribbon and the heads of decapitated Barbie dolls dipped in glitter.
I am home. I let my body rock to the baseline, nod my head. There is something so soothing about Al Green. The music salves my anger, reweaves my fraying edges. I gather up what I need: a green pale filled with paint brushes, a wicker basket over loaded with tubes of acrylic, a 20 x 20 canvas stretched and stapled to a wood frame and a mirror.
After this year I’m taking off. I have a little money and by June I’ll have some more. I’ll flip a coin and pick a coast, buy a train ticket and just go. That’s all I’ve got as far as plans. Away sounds like heaven. Inhale. Exhale. If I can just make it through this year then I can go away, but the sad reality is I could barely make it through the luau. “Lay it down, lay it down, lay it down, put your head on the floor…” Al Green implores. I am listening.
Tomorrow will be infinitely worse. It is what it is and I can’t change it, but I can do something...one thing. I can take this blank canvas and make something beautiful. I plop down onto a purple cushion and lay today down beside me. I upend the basket of paint tubes,letting them clatter onto the rug as I fish for a metallic teal. No thinking now, just the magic of fat brush strokes moving in concentric circles until the canvas is bathed in waves of turquoise and gold, sea greens and blues and more gold. “Lay it down, let it go, fall in love…”
I pull the mirror toward me. I want to see myself through my own myopic eyes: burnt sienna skin, cinnamon eyes framed with angular glasses. I am round faced with pixie ears ringed from lobe to cuff in tiny silver hoops, a round soft black afro squiggling out from my head. Eyes like my mom, nose like my dad but punctuated with a silver stud, full dark lips, and a trace of a scar down my jaw line from when I fell ice skating a million years ago. I stare at my reflection until I can see my face for what it is, not stories or scars or genetic happenstance, just shapes and angles, a collection of slopes and planes, the hard jut of my chin, the tension in my mouth, the shadows in my irises. Focus. Mr. Wu says the first step is to capture what’s there, start with the obvious.
I etch the framework in purple, blot in bitter chocolate, flecks of jade, tangerine, a dash of silver. I drag blue gray shadows across my cheeks and shape angular magenta eyelids. A soft burgundy rounds the ridges of my wide African nose. Pearl essence makes it all melt together until I start to appear, my oversized eyes magnified by copper rimmed fifties glasses, my chipmunk cheeks. I don’t smile, because no one is around to require it of me. I sneer. I bare my teeth like a warning. I paint the warrior I wish I could be; streak my cheekbones with thin crimson stripes and draw white circles across my forehead. My hair is a chunky halo of indigo violet. I paint it rough like sea waves, the unscalable cliffs of nappy mountains that jut off the canvas in rippling layers. Then I add my arms and hands, palms up like I’m trying to bang my way out of my own picture. Wu says every good work of art holds a kernel of truth, an emotion, an expression that tells a little secret about the artist. And there it is, my truth. I’m desperate to claw my way out of my life.
“Ollie, it’s time to baste again,” Mom calls from an undetermined location within the house. I leave my cleaver stabbed through the heart of a pineapple and find the bucket of sacred pig sauce, a murky concoction made from fresh squeezed Valencia oranges, aged brandy, butter, and a blend of twenty six secret herbs and spices. I paint it on lengthwise from snout to tail, enjoying the tiny gasps and hisses as the juices sizzle against the fire. At least one of us doesn’t have to suffer in silence. The basting is hot work on a ruthlessly sticky day and I am tired and irritable. My only consolation is the pig smell saturating everything within a three block radius. It is a tangible aroma, so thick just inhaling deeply seems to leave a salty tangy meat taste in my mouth.
When it comes to holidays, it doesn’t matter which one, my mother has this incurable form of OCD which makes it physically impossible for her not to throw a party. The thing is, it’s never just a party. It can’t be simple: a few streamers and a Costco cake. No, it has to be some long, drawn out, Martha Stewart worthy extravaganza with enough gourmet food to feed a Haitian refugee camp. And as her faithful minion, bound by the seventeenth year of my indentured servitude, I am obligated to be by her side for all fifty two annual secular and religious celebrations, not to mention personal holidays like birthdays and anniversaries. It’s in my contract.
I remember my sister Jade’s ninth birthday with a shudder. Theme: Under the Sea. Everyone was dressed as their favorite mermaid (I was the dreaded Sea Witch Ursula) and then a band of musicians showed up wearing sea creature costumes. I was five and giant crabs roaming the backyard with portable steel drums was terrifying. I refused to leave the house. Then Dad had to give me the Hymlic because Mom thought it would be neat to freeze Ariel figurines inside the ice cubes floating in the blue punch. Yeah, it was fabulous. Who cares if I only almost died? It is an illness, but instead of getting quarantined or medicated, Mom gets to inflict her insanity on everyone and they love her for it. They show up in droves because my mother is the perfect hostess.
A good hostess is warm, caring, gracious, and welcoming. She gives the impression that the guest is the most important person in the world and that nothing is too much trouble to ensure their comfort and contentment. A good hostess is courteous to her guests, even if they are rude. She is detail oriented and adaptable to the needs of the situation, always ready with a back up plan. On a good day I am none of these things, and today is not a particularly good day, so I must fake it hard or do my best to be invisible or both. Mournful sigh.
Solomon rounds the corner carrying an ice chest.
“Where does this go?”
“Beneath the buffet table,” I point to the lavishly dressed table beside my workstation which is scattered with artistically slaughtered pineapples. I’ll need to clean that up before She comes back outside.
“God that smells amazing,” Solomon moans.
“Of course it does.”
By 7:00 p.m. the pineapple is curried, flambéd, and plated beautifully. It rests on the epic buffet between the lobster poofs and the green potato salad. The yard is already filling up with neighbors and family friends, mostly middle aged lesbians dressed in obnoxious dayglow flowered shirts and hell bent on congratulating me on beginning the last year of adolescence.
“Oh Olive Jane, look at you. You’re becoming such a woman,” Deborah tells me like I just got my rag and I’m in a fucking Judy Blume novel. Congratulations. You’ve got boobies and acne. The ugly duckling is now the black swan of womanly goodness, even though you’re still short and pudgy and nothing like your sister. Well you still have another year of high school. It could get better? Then she follows up with the million dollar question: “So which colleges are you applying to?”
Not the C word. Double sigh. Inhale, allow pig air to numb the annoyance. Must maintain the appropriate fake pleasant facade. Exhale, perfectly crafted lie: “I’m not going to college right away. I’m planning on taking next year off to find myself.” As if by some miracle I could ever actually lose myself.
“Well then what Olive Jane? What happens after your year off?”
Do I look like a fucking magic eight ball? I hate it when she calls me Olive Jane, like we’re all buddy buddy and it’s our thing that she gave me this stupid pet name. I want to tell her it’s Ollie or Olivia. Pick one. I only get Olivia Jane when I’m in big trouble. And Olive Jane? No one calls me that. It sounds like a dirty martini.
“I’ll keep you posted,” I tell her all sugary sweet, then let the platter of deviled eggs tilt forward just enough so that three creamy eggs slide off the edge and land with a splat on her shoes, egg side down. Hole in one. The fake look of concern masks my radiant snarky smile. I’m much too well house broken to tell Mom’s friends to fuck off, but I’ll egg their Birkenstocks and look sincerely apologetic while fetching a paper towel to wipe their toes with.
7:30 p.m. The pig is served. Solomon and Toni cart the beast to the carving station. My mother is poised, an opulent lae of fuchsia hibiscus around her neck, an oversized fork in one hand, an electric knife in the other. Vrrooom. Vrroooom. Come and get it. Though I’m salivating for a taste, as I watch the dissection my stomach begins to churn. Maybe it’s the realization that I’m not so far up the food chain. I could be that pig, happily minding my own pig business, blissfully oblivious to the impending doom, then whamo, dead and roasted so everyone can have a piece. I really don’t want to go to school tomorrow.
“Psst, Ollie.” Toni motions. “Light the torches.”
10:00 p.m. When it’s finally over and I’m alone again, I can still I feel the eyes pressing in on me from all sides. Stop looking at me. I quell the urge to break something, knowing I’ll just have to clean it up and it’s not worth it. I’ve got my manic hostess grin plastered to my face, but inside I’m seething, screaming at the top of my lungs with the volume on mute. LEAVE ME ALONE. This happens sometimes. If I can retreat fast enough, I can prevent the explosion. It hurts to breathe, even the luscious pig air feels stifling now, like a pig flavored blanket smothering me.
I move through the quiet darkness of the house, as far away from Mom and Toni as I can get. Up the stairs, past straight rows of framed family portraits: Mom, Dad, Jade, Malcolm, me. Smiling. Always smiling. Malcolm in his football uniform. Malcolm with his basketball team winning the State Championship. Jade in a midair split performing with the drill team. Jade crossing the finish line at a track meet. She is a winner too. Jade being crowned Homecoming Queen: a crowned and certified winner. I keep moving, past the ghost of family past, around the corner, through the spare room and up the last flight of stairs into the attic. I lock the door behind me; let the fake smile disintegrate, but the party induced panic remains.
She has to know how much I hate it: all the chatting, the cheek pinching, fielding nosy questions from people who haven’t been teenagers in so long they’ve actually tricked themselves into remembering high school as something fun. Haven’t they been reading the paper? Nothing is fun when you’re a casualty of war. I know they know, or at least they think they know all about it. It’s obvious by the furtive whispers and the sad faced pitying glances. I hear it in their voices as they tell me: “Your mom is so brave. You must be so proud.” But I am not proud. I’m exhausted. I’m covered in mosquito bites, spilled barbecue sauce, and lipstick prints from the really old women intent on kissing my cheeks and forehead because unlike everyone else my age, I’m still short enough for them to reach. I’m angry. I’m embarrassed and worst of all doomed to repeat the never ending story of my humiliation once more, again. I really, really don’t want to go to school tomorrow.
I need Al Green and a fresh canvas, badly. The floorboards creak beneath my bare feet. I inhale the warm inedible scent of cedar and sandalwood that clings to the attic asserting ownership of the space, a welcome relief from the siren song of pig. Lights. Cue the music. That’s better. The attic is my sanctuary. With my brother gone to college, my sister gone to New York and my dad just gone, there’s a whole lot of house and not a lot of people. I like it better this way, just me and Mom and now Toni. Mom finally agreed to let me convert the attic into an artist studio. It didn’t take much. I only had to get rid of some old junk and clean up the floors. I kept the tacky green seventies wall paper though, not that it’s very visible. The built in bookshelves are fully stocked with every art supply imaginable and almost every inch of wall is covered by paintings and collages and more paintings of various sizes and subject matters. The ceiling beams are strung with fairylights, tissue paper kites, homemade piñatas, and mobiles constructed from Christmas ribbon and the heads of decapitated Barbie dolls dipped in glitter.
I am home. I let my body rock to the baseline, nod my head. There is something so soothing about Al Green. The music salves my anger, reweaves my fraying edges. I gather up what I need: a green pale filled with paint brushes, a wicker basket over loaded with tubes of acrylic, a 20 x 20 canvas stretched and stapled to a wood frame and a mirror.
After this year I’m taking off. I have a little money and by June I’ll have some more. I’ll flip a coin and pick a coast, buy a train ticket and just go. That’s all I’ve got as far as plans. Away sounds like heaven. Inhale. Exhale. If I can just make it through this year then I can go away, but the sad reality is I could barely make it through the luau. “Lay it down, lay it down, lay it down, put your head on the floor…” Al Green implores. I am listening.
Tomorrow will be infinitely worse. It is what it is and I can’t change it, but I can do something...one thing. I can take this blank canvas and make something beautiful. I plop down onto a purple cushion and lay today down beside me. I upend the basket of paint tubes,letting them clatter onto the rug as I fish for a metallic teal. No thinking now, just the magic of fat brush strokes moving in concentric circles until the canvas is bathed in waves of turquoise and gold, sea greens and blues and more gold. “Lay it down, let it go, fall in love…”
I pull the mirror toward me. I want to see myself through my own myopic eyes: burnt sienna skin, cinnamon eyes framed with angular glasses. I am round faced with pixie ears ringed from lobe to cuff in tiny silver hoops, a round soft black afro squiggling out from my head. Eyes like my mom, nose like my dad but punctuated with a silver stud, full dark lips, and a trace of a scar down my jaw line from when I fell ice skating a million years ago. I stare at my reflection until I can see my face for what it is, not stories or scars or genetic happenstance, just shapes and angles, a collection of slopes and planes, the hard jut of my chin, the tension in my mouth, the shadows in my irises. Focus. Mr. Wu says the first step is to capture what’s there, start with the obvious.
I etch the framework in purple, blot in bitter chocolate, flecks of jade, tangerine, a dash of silver. I drag blue gray shadows across my cheeks and shape angular magenta eyelids. A soft burgundy rounds the ridges of my wide African nose. Pearl essence makes it all melt together until I start to appear, my oversized eyes magnified by copper rimmed fifties glasses, my chipmunk cheeks. I don’t smile, because no one is around to require it of me. I sneer. I bare my teeth like a warning. I paint the warrior I wish I could be; streak my cheekbones with thin crimson stripes and draw white circles across my forehead. My hair is a chunky halo of indigo violet. I paint it rough like sea waves, the unscalable cliffs of nappy mountains that jut off the canvas in rippling layers. Then I add my arms and hands, palms up like I’m trying to bang my way out of my own picture. Wu says every good work of art holds a kernel of truth, an emotion, an expression that tells a little secret about the artist. And there it is, my truth. I’m desperate to claw my way out of my life.
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