This is the youngest member of our CUPSI 2012 team, first-year Rachel Rostad, killing it out of suicide for our second prelims.
This is the youngest member of our CUPSI 2012 team, first-year Rachel Rostad, killing it out of suicide for our second prelims.
…to the Macalester Poetry Slam tumblr! On this here webpage we’ll post about upcoming Macslams events, promote local twin cities’ spoken word events, tell you about us and what we do with the slam, and answer all of your questions. The Macslams student organization may be run by us (us being Abbie Shain, Niko Martell, Rachel Rostad, Kat Fleckenstein, and Anna Binkovitz) but the slam is not ours, it’s yours. You make or break it by coming, by competing, by supporting us and everyone that takes the stage.
We’re already hard at work planning a great year of slams, workshops, and features and can’t wait for school to start back up (well, we can wait a little). Soon to come will be some of our videos from CUPSI 2012 (College Union Poetry Slam Invitational) and a little bit about how we plan to run slams in the coming year.
As this is a poetry organization, we’ll leave you with a few lines dedicated to you, the lovely people who know us/love us/mistyped their intended tumblr url:
Roses are red,
violets are blue,
we love Macslams,
and hope you do too!
I know I have wasted those years,
I drink too much coffee
and I love too many smokers.
But this is my fire escape prayer,
my most honest breath used;
Please,
let me grow.
hehehe, I promise I can write more than dick joke poems, I swear.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqnba1WbfB0&list=UUcpfPT94Z_NfBG7kAX9VVRw&index=6&feature=plcp
I don’t sleep anymore,
and if I do,
it is only because my thoughts
have grown tired of piggybacking off of eachother.
I don’t eat anymore,
and if I do,
it is only because my mouth needs the excercise,
needs familiar motions,
the words “I want to marry him” stretch uncomfortably.
I don’t date anymore,
and if I do,
it is in the hopes that you see me.
Not to hurt you,
not to make you jealous,
but to show you the sparkling me,
that beautiful museum piece.
I want to be something worth stealing again.
Saying you love someone is easy, so is meaning it. Living up to that is the trick.
Loving someone is not the same as having faith in the future. I wish it was.
Somewhere in there is a poem. I have yet to fully actualize it.
Loving you:
It is like slipping on sweatpants,
erasing a thumbprint.
It is like shedding skin.
It is easy.
It is not easy because you make it easy,
no, you make it difficult.
Like riding a bicycle backwards,
or french braiding tongues
or like believing in us.
Believing in us is not easy,
but it is not difficult either.
See it is like trying to breath underwater
or flinching when a firecracker goes off,
it is my body
refusing to let us die.
We are kept alive,
not because we are together,
we are not.
We are kept alive
because you have become the support beam
holding my heart up,
keeping my rib cage from crushing my lungs-
and you know there are days when it would.
You have become something my body is trained to protect,
the way I insinctively curve my hands around my head
when I know the crash is coming.
My heart will not let me evict you,
because that would either be too easy
or too difficult.
Last night was Macalester’s Grand Slam, where the top 5 poets of the night were selected to represent the school at CUPSI 2012. The next two (sixth and seventh) will be coming with us and working on poems, but won’t compete. Our team this year is kickass!
Abbie Shain
Dylan Garity
Anna Binkovitz (me)
Rachel Rostad
Niko Martell
Kat Fleckenstein and Naomi Madaras are coming with us and working with us for the semester.
Sam Cook and Neil Hilborn will be coaching us.
Dear rest of CUPSI-ing folk,
Watch out. We crazy, we good, we crazy good.
So, an amazingly talented woman, Kait Rokowski, is competing to win a paid spot competing at the Women of the World Poetry Slam. She had been winning by a lot, but someone was cheating, so the votes have been reset.
Watch the videos, vote for your favorite, and help send Kait, so she can win it all.
http://www.poetryslam.com/index.php?option=com_psivideo&view=all&Itemid=131
