Sister Slam and the
Poetic Motormouth Road Trip

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
super-sonic 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. Nase,
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’s bar
in the local Seven 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.

(continued)

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 be-boppin’ 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 your 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
I’d changed my name
and after graduation day
I was going away
to take place
in the Tin Can
Poetry Slam.

"You’re not as big as you
think," he sputtered.
"And you’ve never
driven further
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
to make me into
Sister Slam.

My parents
rocked me to sleep
by reading heaps
of poetry:
Edna Millay
and William Blake,
Edgar Allen 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 was 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.