North Carolina 1, or Promises

Dear Dane,
Here are some things I want you to remember and promise yourself for next time there's a great big poetry slam.

1) I know it was really tempting to go all-out and fight for the win when you found out you'd drawn the very last (read: strategically best) spot in your bout, but your gut was telling you otherwise, and you know it. Swastika and Importance of Dialogue are not the pieces you need to be performing right now. The fact that you do them while shouting, and slam audiences sometimes like that, is no reason to persist in using them. Poems are not workhorses. Quit it.

2) That said, now that you're out of the running for finals, I can't wait for you to do the pieces you're *really* invested in tomorrow. Go all-out with it. Screw the fact that you're competing against some of your closest poetfriends, and a few genuine celebrities. Let the remember you as the girl who did the poems she needed to do and did them well.

3)The whole buying-lots-of-food thing was a good idea.

4) I wish I could post Khary Jackson's piece here from the four minute round. It was a persona piece in the voice of an old Black man talking about how his Alzheimer's is causing him to forget his wife's name sometimes. Remember how you began to cry hard right in the middle. Remember how you weren't just crying for the piece. Remember how he held you when he came back to sit down and you were still crying, his arms like butterfly wings against you.

5) You have memorized more than you think you have.

6) You don't have to go to every event you possibly can. You'll have more fun if you remember to relax and hang out with some established friends, too.

7) There is no number 7.

8) You will get to Seattle. You will get to Seattle. You will get to Seattle.

Love,
~me