Glori B : Poet

Glori B is a slam poet, teacher, and mother living in Ausitn, Tx. She is a two-time NPS group-piece champion, National Haiku Deathmatch Champion, and two-time Texas Grand Slam finalist. 

[beingglori]

This SxSW I, along with several other Austin Poetry Slam regulars, was invited to perform at the closing party for the 2016 Personalized Learning & Student Success Summit. They graciously recorded and posted videos. 

Check out one of my teacher poems, dedicated to my students Guadalupe and Martin, “Yolamos.”

[beingglori]

May 8 2015, Facebook reminds me, I posted this status:

"Barriers to asking for help: -being afraid of sharing with people who say they are there for you but get turned off when you actually need them -being afraid of sharing with people with whom you're not emotionally intimate enough and it being difficult -being afraid of sharing with people with whom you are too emotionally intimate (such as family and partners) who will take your depression personally and end up needing you to comfort them about your own depression -being afraid of asking for support and receiving rejection, which would only affirm the voice of self-loathing in your head -being afraid of speaking the words and giving life to the shadows -being afraid"

That status, and the conversations it bore, became this poem. 

I went on to rehearse and perform that poem countless times over the summer. At the end, when we talk about how long it's been, May 8th was the day I was always counting up from. This video was taken on day 99.

May 9 2015, Facebook now reminds me, I posted this status:

"My team holds me tight so I can hold myself together."

I got through that day, and the next 99, because I talked about it. Because I had a team of people who had my back. Because I refused to be ashamed of feeling the way I felt.

I hope you find that, if you need it. But even more, I hope you can be that to someone who needs it. I hope you never have to feel afraid to say you're hurting. If you can say it, you can survive it.

Please stay.

[beingglori]

4.9.16 - Identity - 30/30

Every day in April I will attempt to write a first draft of a new poem, and post them here. Please feel free to follow along and share. Happy National Poetry Month!

Identify She asks me how I identify and I breathe for a long moment-- recite easy pronouns and balk at the rest; I am not at work. Here, it is safe to be who I am... I am nearly thirty; I thought I would know by now. I say It hasn't mattered in a long time. And in this forest clearing of queer and quiet safe space, we talk about the strength it takes to hold a person with hands full of trauma. Here, it is safe to be what I am, if only I knew what that was. I say, I want everything until I can reach it, and realize my hands are webbed and covered in scales. She asks how long it took before I felt whole again, asks if I am strong enough to hold water. I stare at my soft hands and tell her, A fluid thing never breaks, it just splits itself in smaller pools.

[beingglori]

4.8.16 - Where - 30/30

Every day in April I will attempt to write a first draft of a new poem, and post them here. Please feel free to follow along and share. Happy National Poetry Month!

Where I only cry in elevators or bathroom stalls or my own bed, except when I cry in my car or in my classroom after the children go home. I almost never cry at parties, unless there is a balcony and a sliding glass door. There have been exceptions made for six to eight coat closets, a handful of janitor's closets, and the closet of the room I shared with my little sister growing up. I have been known to cry in the kitchen, while everyone else plays board games in the dining room, and also on the playground when we were young and they still considered a concrete tube an appropriate scape for play. Once, I may have cried in the back seat of my best friend's car, quietly, pretending to sleep. Or sitting by the creek down the path from her house. Or in Sears at the mall when I was six, huddled in the center of a circular clothing rack, a curtain of church dresses in pastel tones obstructing me from view. I cry on stage, of course. All this to say, I only cry when I am alone. So on that day, when you were the one to find me in the dimly lit, empty library choking down another shot of poison from someone I no longer love, I did not know what to do: run? or pretend to be alright? or bury my face into your sweater, and find away to be alone with you?

[beingglori]

4.7.16 - Give - 30/30

Every day in April I will attempt to write a first draft of a new poem, and post them here. Please feel free to follow along and share. Happy National Poetry Month!

Give

How many men have I told, "I guess that would be okay,"

and let my fingers only loosely grip a thing I did want when I also wanted more to be perceived as a giving person:           gracious           memorably kind           unselfish           not a bitch

and felt him take my next meal out of my hungry hands when I had worked hard to earn or find or create something for myself,

and watched him sink his fingers in before I could clarify that I would give up anything even when I didn't want to because someone taught me that giving things up was the mark of a noble and holy woman,

and felt my voice soft when I told him how belonging that thing was to me, without ever being able to articulate precisely           that it was mine           that I did want it           that it does not matter how little a thing it is to give up           that I am always giving everything up

and fell silent at hearing him say, "I don't know what you want me to say" when I know that he knows what I want him to say,

when what I should have said was (but never said was but could not say was but would not be heard saying was) "This is mine. Please don't take it."

[beingglori]

4.6.16 - Prelude to a Crash - 30/30

Every day in April I will attempt to write a first draft of a new poem, and post them here. Please feel free to follow along and share. Happy National Poetry Month!

Prelude to a Crash Just before midnight, in the car, on the drive home, it occurs to me that I have forgotten something else, another promise I do not quite have the energy to honor. Still, in my kitchen, I wash the spoons by hand so I can eat cold cereal for dinner in front of the television before I try to measure out whether I have anything left to shower, or grade papers, or clean the litter box, or whether I am fully spent. The day has stuck to me, tight knot of sharp burrs. There is no want for opportunities to take care of the people around me, but now, when I need care, there is no one around.

[beingglori]

4.5.16 - Refraction - 30/30

Every day in April I will attempt to write a first draft of a new poem, and post them here. Please feel free to follow along and share. Happy National Poetry Month!

Refraction

I didn't want to come tonight. Some days the presence of other people is the dim glow of evening fireflies, some days it is the swirl of fruit flies in a kitchen I feel guilty for not cleaning.

I could have sat alone at home, both glad to be alone, where no one can hate me, and stewing in the fear that the alone would spill over the rim and spread out and be all that was left for me to drink.

I don't know whether it is weak or self care or self-indulgent to take a hiatus from the thing I love because men keep being mean to me?

Does it matter why the bruises form green and blue and yellow under my skin? And what hurts will I be forgiven for feeling? Which sad eyes receive comfort, and which sad eyes receive scorn? Imagining others imagine motive for my tears does not keep my eyes dry, but rather, makes me want to hide my face.

[beingglori]

4.4.16 - Check Out - 30/30

Every day in April I will attempt to write a first draft of a new poem, and post them here. Please feel free to follow along and share. Happy National Poetry Month!

Check Out

In the grocery store amid beeps and the low hum of voices, I hear the song that makes me think of you. No “our song”, perhaps no song you even know, or like, or would ever think of me in hearing.

It is your song because that week, when I realized you had wormed your way into being an emotional inconvenience I kept driving around, listening to it.

It is not a song for loving you, but a song for being without you, and even over the dull of humans buying fruit and barbecue sauce I can hear the violins, the drums, announcing, you are not here,

you are not here and I still love you, you and I will never do something so mundane and domestic as choosing apples or arguing over wheat bread, you are not here, and I ache in longing, take my frozen meal for one and go home.

The song still plays as the automatic doors open into the heat of the parking lot, where there is no music, and still you are not here.

--Gloria C. Adams, “Check Out”

[beingglori]

Austin Poetry Slam Team 2015: Team Shine

2015 National Poetry Slam Group Piece Champions

Team: Chucky Black, Chris Formey, Glori B, SC Says, Jess Howard

Coaches: Danny Strack, Victoria Murray

Photos by: Tova Charles

[beingglori]

4.3.16 - Kitchen - 30/30

Every day in April I will attempt to write a first draft of a new poem, and post them here. Please feel free to follow along and share. Happy National Poetry Month!

Kitchen

The refrigerator groans, full of take out boxes with dubious unmarked dates of arrival— no groceries, not for weeks.

The stove yawns, not hungry, but aching and tired from resting too long.

The washing machine murmurs to her lost love, broken down, overheated and never repaired. She tackles her abandonment issues, wonders if she’ll work again though she isn’t the one who gave up.

Even the dishwasher sits, full of himself, bored from weeks of no work. The sink would even prefer the days of unwashed plates and spoons to this. The microwave took for granted its privilege of being the last one to the party— a kind of unemployment all of them are accustomed to now and again: October or November, April or May.

The bottom falls out of the economy and there isn’t any work because I’m not eating so there’s nothing to clean.

They whisper to each other at night, humming with electricity and disuse, waiting for this cycle to pass, waiting for vegetables and dirty clothes, waiting for the kind of night where guests dirty every bowl in the house in one fell swoop, waiting for me to show up in the kitchen and do anything but stare into the cold light of the refrigerator, and want nothing any of them have to offer me.

--Gloria C. Adams, “Kitchen”

[beingglori]

4.2.16 - From the Tree - 30/30

Every day in April I will attempt to write a first draft of a new poem, and post them here. Please feel free to follow along and share. Happy National Poetry Month!

From the Tree

I can’t fix it, not for her, not when I never could fix it for myself.

Another year no one comes to the birthday party.

This house is such a mess; there are fruit flies again, and the plugs so loose everything flickers.

I worry that she will live like this, like I have always lived: open invitation, empty table, fists closed, eyes full.

-Gloria C. Adams, From the Tree

[beingglori]

4.1.16 - Red Pen - 30/30

Every day in April I will attempt to write a first draft of a new poem, and post them here. Please feel free to follow along and share. Happy National Poetry Month!

Red Pen

In this job, you have two choices: become a grammarian, or become a linguist, choose to teach correct or teach context.

You can red pen everything wrong you see, correct and scold and inferior, or you can fascinate at the way some children use red blocks to build a blue castle,

make splatter painting sentences we call kindergarten level fluency or Polluck level creativity based entirely on how much agency we attribute to their home language.

Yesterday, Darreion asked me if Hell was a bad word.

I say, “It depends on who you are.” I say, “It depends on how you use it.” I say, “It depends on where you are.”

He says, “What if I say it to you?"

I say, “It would hurt me if you said 'go to hell', but I wouldn’t mind if you said ‘Hell Yeah'.”

He says, “What if I say it in your classroom?”

I say, “That wouldn’t be — professional.”

When he comes into class, he searches for a pencil he can sharpen and use for the day. My classroom floor is littered with markers and abandoned writing utensils, sketchy drawings in the margins of unnamed papers.

When other teachers ask why I allow my students to read graphic novels in class, I tell them that the only difference between a comic and a paragraph is who believes it qualifies as literature; telling children that what they love to read does not count is just another way of calling their masterpieces scribbles.

When we walk in a line to the cafeteria, emerging from the door he cackles with energy, sculpts our hands into a fist bump, shouting, “Hell yeah, Miss, it’s lunch time.”

Hell yes.

--Gloria C. Adams, “Red Pen”

[beingglori]

I wrote this poem in the middle of the night one night after leaving a comment on my friend, Charlotte’s, Facebook post. Things weren’t going well for her, and she posted about it publicly. She asked for support from her community. I was blown away by her openness. By the way my heart swelled for her. I sat up all night thinking about what it means for us to have this social media- this way of saying things openly, to filters or communities or trusted friends. The way we open our heart and cry in public. The way we trust each other with our pain. 

The world will try to shut you down. It will try to shut you up. It will tell you that your pain is inconvenient. It will tell you that your life is not worth being lived unless you are fun to be around. But the best friends I have in my life aren’t my best because they invited me to the most parties; they are my best because they were there for me when I was at my worst.

This has become one of my favorite poems to perform, and I only wrote it about two months ago. This poem is my gospel; if you are hurting, please talk to someone. If someone you love is hurting, please listen. It’s not your job to fix us. Just love us. Just listen. 

Fight depression with connection.

[beingglori]

April 30/30 - Poem 28 - An Open Letter to Leland Vittert

An Open Letter to Leland Vittert

reporter for FNC, after his interview of Baltimore Councilman Nick Mosby

You want to talk about broken glass. You want to say the name of every brand of stolen bottled liquor. Your eyes dart around, like you know your mistake, asking a question of a man prepared to answer. It would have been better to find a fool. God forbid you get the news. No one wants news.

They want the broken glass. The missing bottle. The fear.

We know how to avert our eyes, how to pretend this problem isn’t ours like anything we say is going to be wrong, like our silence isn’t a greater wrong.

Last night I lay on the floor and listened to a patient friend open up his chest, talk about angry and hurt and fear like it make up the asphalt beneath his bare feet and he had been walking in the sun all day.

I woke to your insistence that I must want to know about the broken glass. Watched you interrupt a patient man who was only trying to answer the question you asked, but not the way you wanted it answered. I know you; surely I am one of you.

We know how to stay warm, basking in someone else’s house fire.

All you ever want to talk about is broken glass, just never the shattered spines that foreshadow it.

[beingglori]

April 30/30 - Poem 27 - Conversion Rate

Conversion Rate

He asks me, “How many poems are you going to write about rape?” and his tone tells me he thinks there have already been enough.

I say nothing.

It is important for you to know that in the moment I said nothing. I laughed nervous. I averted my eyes. I began to compose.

I will write a poem for every twenty times I get this question.

I will write ten poems for every thousand times I hear a joke where force or coercion or acquiesce is the punch line.

I will write two poems for every hundred times I am told I cannot write one of my students a referral for something I consider to be harassment, these poems will consist of 24 lines for every time an administrator tells me they are just kids and an extra 10 for each utterance of "boys will be boys"

I will write a poem every time I wake up unable to breathe from the reoccurring nightmare.

I will write a poem every 37 times I am reminded I am supposed to be afraid, or scolded for not behaving afraid.

Ten for each hundred times I am told men can't be raped. Ten for each thousand times I am told fat girls can't be raped. Ten for each million times I am told you can't rape the willing when I know that someone wasn't.

I will write four poems for each friend who confesses to me their tragedy, and a bonus haiku for every bottle of wine it took for them to have the strength to tell me.

I will write three poems for every twelve times someone tells me that what happened to me does not fit their definition of rape.

I will write an epic, longer than the Iliad and the Odyssey put together about the night my mother taught me what date rape was, and how after eighteen years, it turned out that this is what she had been saving herself for.

I will fill a book. I will fill a library. I will write until my hands fall off.

I will not know when I have written enough of them. I will never know when any of this is going to finally stop.

[beingglori]

April 30/30 - Poem 26 - Hangover

Hangover

I fell in love with you while I was drunk. Or, I suppose I must have. I woke up on the floor the next morning and there it was, knot in my intestines, ache in the back of my brain, my eyes all unfocused and dried out.

All I could hear was the echo of your laughter, remember the warm of your skin, holding my hand as you helped me up off the floor. And as my legs quivered, cramping for water, all I could think about was your smile, the way I hated wanting you not to leave, wondering what I had done not to deserve you.

[beingglori]

April 30/30 - Poem 25 - Quiet

Quiet

I do not want my old life back, But I want the music. I want the way it felt, dark X on either hand, and later getting the stamp; if nothing else, the bar began to recognize you adult.

I do not want my old life back, but I want the way it felt, waiting in line before the doors, one of six or ten there for the opening act, proudly displaying our enthusiasm like there had never been another band or anyone ever been a fan.

I want the way it felt ehen the piano went in on that song I can still hear in the back of my brain on a sunny day, all hip flick and neck bop.

We didn't have to crowd surf to feel like we were floating six feet above the ground, A feeling equal but opposite to death, sloughing off bits of our souls like loose skin cells shaken free, everything splitting and growing, the music itself a kind of meiosis in our bodies.

When the drum hit just right you didn't have to have a heartbeat anymore, and maybe all it takes to feel alive is a thump that hits your gut and stalls your heart and a pang of want in a tenor or falsetto, and a sticky floor, and a line for the bathroom, and cheap posters, burned CDs, that little club you can never remember the name of with the crackling sound system and the watery drinks,

maybe that's all it took for us to shake off our horror stories: not dancing but sort of jolting around together, passionate but with a clear respect for the personal bubbles of those around you-

How the front man remembered your name and gave you a hug, all sweaty vest and prickly beard.

How the guitarist noticed you knew the words to every song, said he saw the light shining in you as you rocked on your round feet and sang along.