Sister Slam and the Poetic Motormouth Road Trip Read online

  Contents

  Lesson 1 Never Ignore Spam Because It’s Not Always What It Seems

  Lesson 2 You Don’t Need a List for a Road Trip

  Lesson 3 Never Run from Hitting a Pig

  Lesson 4 Don’t Get Cocky with Cops

  Lesson 5 Expect Annoying People

  Lesson 6 How to Take Lemons and Make Lemonade

  Lesson 7 Never Start a Slam Without a Cup of Coffee

  Lesson 8 Always Check Out the Judges Before a Slam

  Lesson 9 Always Check the Gas Tank Before Leaving

  Lesson 10 Never Let Your Best Friend Attack Your Sanity and Your Vanity

  Lesson 11 Expect That Some Things Will Be Crappy

  Lesson 12 Don’t Look at Your Hair While Driving

  Lesson 13 Always Be Ready to Be Struck by the Love Bug

  Lesson 14 Always Look Your Best Because You Never Know Who You’re Going to Wreck Into

  Lesson 15 Never Wash Your Face in the Bidet

  Lesson 16 Be Very Careful When Chewing Hard Cinnamon Hearts

  Lesson 17 Always Perform Poems in Public When Someone Wants You To

  Lesson 18 Expect Magic

  Lesson 19 Never Expect a Marshmallow Fluff Kind of Life to Last Forever

  Lesson 20 Always Go Home When There’s Trouble

  Lesson 21 Never Let Doctors Blame You for Their Patients’ Problems

  Lesson 22 Never Take Your Friggin’ Soul Mate for Granted

  Lesson 23 Dream, Believe, Fly

  Acknowledgements

  For Lola Schaefer:

  a spectacular friend, writer, teacher,

  critiquer. Thanks for helping bring

  Sister to life.

  Lesson 1

  Never Ignore Spam Because It’s Not Always What It Seems

  Sister Slam I am.

  I don’t like spam.

  Not the fake pink ham

  that comes in cans,

  or the electronic moronic

  supersonic junk mail

  that never fails to sail

  through your computer screen

  like an intruder seen

  only by you.

  It was the first of June,

  and soon, by the next full moon,

  I’d be loony with jubilation:

  my graduation celebration

  would be happening with my

  too-little two-person family

  in the House of Crapper.

  I swear, by every

  blood-red hair on my spike-cut head,

  or lightning may strike me dead,

  that this is my real name:

  Laura Rose Crapper.

  My lame-brained name

  was my main claim to fame

  at Banesville High School,

  where I wasn’t exactly in

  the cool group.

  The kids of cool in Banesville School

  drove brand-new cars

  and lived in fancy mansions,

  where I liked to imagine

  they had monkey butlers.

  These kids lived mostly on Sutler

  Boulevard, in the rich mountain part

  of town.

  Pops and I lived down in the hollow,

  just us, in a teeny green

  submarine of a mobile home,

  and I drove

  my mom’s old clunker car—

  a ’69 Firebird—

  the funky sick color

  of rabbit turds

  dried in the sun.

  Plus, I was way past chunky.

  In fact, I was downright

  clown-white fat,

  and big hippie chicks

  in thick-soled

  black combat boots

  just didn’t fit into

  the cool kids’ group

  at Banesville School.

  I was an Outsider,

  a Misfit, a Freak.

  “You leak pain

  all over the place,”

  announced Ms. Nace,

  who was a space case.

  She was the school counselor,

  and a total waste of time.

  “Whatever,” I said,

  slumped on her dump

  of a lumpy old couch.

  “Maybe I’m just a grouch,

  or a natural grump.”

  “Perhaps it’s depression,”

  said Ms. Nace.

  “The hurt shows on

  your face, and in

  the slow pace

  of your walk. You sulk.”

  I just let her talk.

  The House of Crapper

  used to be happier,

  back before cancer

  won the war

  in my mom’s body.

  Mom died when I

  was nine, in July.

  She was only

  thirty-five.

  I wasn’t fine, never again,

  but I was maybe okay.

  So anyway,

  it was just a normal day

  of formal blue-suit sky

  and baby birds

  chirping for worms

  on the first of June,

  and I was checking

  my hotmail account,

  deleting, weeding out

  seedy stuff and junk,

  when an ad from Creative Teen ’Zine

  caught my eye.

  “Come Try,” it said

  in the subject line.

  “Try what?” I muttered,

  then clicked the mouse

  and read the message.

  “It doesn’t matter

  if you’re an amateur

  or a pro poet. Nobody knows

  until they try it, what a riot

  it is to sizzle in competition

  in the sport of spoken word.

  Sixth Annual Tin Can, New Jersey,

  Poetry Slam.”

  Well, wham-bam, thank you, ma’am,

  a poetry slam! This was the spam

  that saved my life.

  This was serendipity:

  a true whippity-do

  of a gift

  come straight

  from techno-heaven.

  Ever since I was seven

  and saw the poet laureate

  of the entire United States,

  just like an everyday person,

  eating a Hershey bar

  in the local 7-Eleven,

  I’d been revvin’

  my poetic inspiration,

  ignited with the sensation

  that someday I’d be

  a famous poet.

  I wanted to light up

  the night with the genius

  of my rhyme schemes.

  Well, don’t you know it:

  this was my chance

  to dance in my underpants

  with Peter Pan,

  the green-jeaned,

  flyin’ and rhymin’ man.

  I’d always wanted to slam.

  And so had

  my best friend, Twig,

  an indie-goth-hippie chick like me,

  only Pringle’s Chip skinny,

  whose parents named her for the limb

  of a teeny-weeny tree.

  Twig and me,

  we were a team,

  and it seemed

  that most of the poets

  on TV were like us:

  they tended to cuss sometimes

  without even trying,

  and they weren’t afraid

  of crying.

  They wore black

  and they liked Jack Kerouac

  and some were wacked

  and needed Prozac.

>   Poets seemed bohemian:

  somewhere in between

  what-passed-for-normal

  and the lunatic crazies

  in the Banesville Home

  for the Insane.

  Well, right there

  on that day of June first,

  I decided that the worst

  thing that could ever happen

  was for me to remain forever

  tethered to the House of Crapper.

  I’d just get me some magic

  and a map, and ZAP …

  I’d travel this nation

  and be a sensation!

  Laura Rose Crapper

  would be one happy rapper …

  a jazzer, a beboppin’, hip-hoppin’

  Beat poet, the Queen of Cool,

  don’t ya know it!

  But I’d be a fool,

  and that’s no bull,

  to keep the name

  of Laura Crapper,

  which sounds like a slacker

  or a toilet.

  So I changed my name

  right there on the spot,

  and wow, was it hot,

  so hot it sizzled

  and blistered my fingers

  like Crisco-fried ham.

  My new name was Sister Slam!

  But damn, Pops got way hot

  under the collar

  of his Dollar Store

  working-stiff shirt

  buttoned all the way up

  to his neck. (Heck,

  Pops puts up with

  shirt suffocation

  and the humiliation

  of dirt-factory work,

  all for the perk

  of a three-week

  paid vacation.

  I don’t know why,

  but he wears a tie

  to make cherry pie

  at the Mrs. Smith’s

  factory on Sixth Street,

  where the freakin’ heat

  makes his face

  even geek-redder than ever.)

  But I never

  saw his face

  as beet-red

  as that day,

  when I said that

  I’d changed my name

  and that after graduation day

  I was going away

  to take a place

  in the Tin Can

  Poetry Slam.

  “You’re not as big as you

  think,” he sputtered.

  “And you’ve never

  driven farther

  than the next town

  over. And there’s

  not a thing

  wrong with your name, Laura.”

  He was disconcerted,

  but I asserted

  my decision, mister,

  fixing my vision of fame

  firmly in my brain.

  “Sister Slam I am,”

  I said,

  and did he turn red.

  I thought I was dead,

  he was that red.

  Father Strangles Daughter

  with Dollar Store Necktie

  would be the headline

  in the Daily Local

  (Loco) News of Banesville—

  Hicksville—Pennsylvania.

  “I don’t like green eggs

  and ham,” I said gently,

  hoping to joke

  his face less red.

  Mom and Pops

  (before Mom was dead

  and I was fat)

  used to read

  Dr. Seuss books

  to me a lot—The Cat in the Hat,

  and Red Fish, Blue Fish,

  and Green Eggs and Ham—

  and probably

  that helped

  make me into

  Sister Slam.

  My parents

  rocked me to sleep

  by reading heaps

  of poetry:

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  and William Blake,

  Edgar Allan Poe

  and Van Fernando,

  some guy they used

  to know in high school.

  Mom and Pops

  created this

  word-addicted

  cool-kid-evicted

  fat chick

  who wanted to be a

  butt-kickin’, shit-slingin’

  road poet.

  Pop’s eyes misted,

  and I knew

  that he was wishing

  that Mom were here,

  missing her

  as much as ever.

  It never goes away:

  the ache for what

  used to be.

  “Do what you want,”

  Pops said,

  shaking his head.

  His voice was soft.

  “You’re eighteen,

  and you think

  you’re an adult.

  It’s not my fault.

  It’s not your fault.

  Do it. I can’t stop you anyway.”

  Hooray. Whuppity-do.

  Wham-bam, thank you, Pops.

  Damn, that was easier

  than a spray of

  fake grease

  in a hot, sizzling

  frying pan.

  Better than butter

  in the sun.

  I grabbed Pops,

  wrapping him

  in a hug.

  My new name—

  my claim to fame

  in life after Banesville High—

  was Sister Slam.

  Sister Slam I am.

  Lesson 2

  You Don’t Need a List for a Road Trip

  Twig and me,

  we were getting ready

  to take our show on the road,

  in my toad-colored bedroom.

  It was the day

  after our graduation

  celebration, and

  we were eating

  leftover red velvet

  cake with white cream frosting.

  “That was awesome,

  how your pops

  made the cake

  and decorated

  it with the colors

  of Banesville High

  and a graduate’s cap,”

  Twig said, dropping

  cake crumbs on my bed.

  I nodded.

  Pops was

  a great baker

  of cakes.

  That’s one thing

  I’d miss

  when I was away.

  “Let’s make a

  list,” I said,

  “of everything

  we need to do

  for the road trip.”

  “We don’t need a list,”

  Twig said. “Pack clothes.

  Write poems. Eat, sleep,

  pee, breathe.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Time to create.”

  Sprawled across

  my sloshy waterbed,

  we mulled alone then

  in our own heads, thinking about

  what we could yank out

  and put down on paper.

  Vapors of poems,

  ghost poems,

  floated in our

  brains, part of us,

  but not yet out of us.

  Twig broke

  the quiet diet of words.

  “Remember what you called

  your pillows,

  when we were little?”

  she asked.

  “You don’t expect

  me to forget,”

  I answered.

  “Gloom pillows.”

  My pillows,

  like weeping willows,

  had seen gallons

  of tears through

  the years, so I know

  it sounds weird,

  but I called them

  gloom pillows.

  They were as gray

  as doom, the shades

  of tombs, and some days,

  soaked sopping wet.

  “Maybe I’l
l write me a poem

  or a sad, sad song

  or a long sonnet

  about my gloom pillows,”

  I mused, pulling off

  a blue pillowcase

  and burying my face

  in the gray.

  “Hey,” said Twig.

  “Don’t start

  excavating your heart

  and feeling sorry for yourself,

  Laura. This is no pity

  party. Sorry if I got

  you started, but now stop.

  This is going to be

  one fun summer, and our first road

  trip ever. Pick yourself up!”

  Twig pounced around like a pup.

  I sighed, looking at

  the photo of Mom

  on my closet door.

  I’d gotten it blown up

  as large as possible,

  hoping to make

  Mom life-size again.

  “The Zen of death

  is that she’s with you,

  big as ever,

  every breath, every step,”

  said Twig,

  guessing my thoughts,

  messing with the

  depths of my head.

  “Stop reading

  my mind uninvited,”

  I said.

  “Quit trespassing

  in my brain.”

  “Okay,” said Twig

  with a grin. There

  were red cake crumbs

  on her chin. “Let’s write.”

  The silence returned,

  and our muses churned.

  The cool thing

  about Twig and me

  is that we don’t need

  to talk.

  We can be quiet

  at the same time.

  No-Obligation Conversation.

  I was writing poems.

  Twig was writing poems.

  My lava lamp rolled

  slow and relaxing

  like the melting wax

  of an old Christmas candle

  lit for the Fourth of July.

  “We might be white,

  but we can write

  like soul sisters,

  man,” said Twig, doodling

  and chewing on the eraser

  of her pencil.

  “Listen to this,” she said.

  “The title is ‘Revolution.’”

  Then she read:

  You say you want a revolution,

  but the Constitution

  and John Lennon are dead.

  Yoko Ono’s alone in the bed,

  shaking her head over something

  John said Yesterday. What a mess today.

  I Want to Hold Your Hand,

  somebody or anybody’s hand.

  Do you have a Ticket to Ride?

  I lost mine, when John Lennon died.

  I applauded.

  “It’s just like you,”

  I said. “Political

  and totally cynical.”

  “Well, you know

  I’ve been a Beatles

  groupie since I

  was a fetus,” Twig

  said, “thanks to

  my mother playing

  records to her

  pregnant stomach.”

  Twig’s parents are

  eccentric. Way flaky.

  Her mother does Botox

  and her dad’s always in detox

  for one substance or another.

  “I’m beside myself

  for this gig,” Twig said.

  “Can you dig it?