Poetry Slam Your Body Down and Wind It All-Around

I write slam poetry. I developed this passion in my mid-twenties carousing with a rap collective. It was an introduction to beats, lyricism, sex, drugs, and great heights. Their female member inspired me with her early work as a slam poet. I was far too intimidated to ever talk to her outside informal introduction over hot dogs named for the Minnesota Twins at The Depot, First Avenue’s dining tavern. Still, as I stupidly climbed up to the top of abandoned warehouses and listened to men rap to the beats in their heads, I gathered the ambition to no longer write poetry. I would spit it.

People follow me because long before Covid19 and the rise of open dialogue surrounding mental health, I was saying what most were too scared to admit. Before my therapist ordered a social media sabbatical and my account went caput, I had created quite the following on Twitter using my wit and intelligence to draw in myriad readers. My handle was @realcaliloria, anticipating the day I would need such a verified name. I bought a necklace from BaubleBar in rose gold with this handle and wore it like a rapper would a gold Jesus piece. I interacted with my favorite author, Cara Hoffman, an incredible consultant, Susan Campion, whose genius mind had created the arts and entrepreneurial conference Giant Steps. I had spoken to a porn star who created STEM scholarships for young women. Once, in New York, I found out about a beautiful escort and made plans over the internet to try fried crickets in Las Vegas. The one thing all of these people had in common was an interest in what I would say next.

Due to my mental health, an assortment of letters like BPD that at first glance seem to allude to a sexual fetish, I have gone on and off social media, often creating new accounts when I wanted a rebranding of sorts. I regret this immensely. Still, I find strangers gravitating toward me with fascinating comments such as: “You can’t hear me right now, but I’m clapping and cheering for this piece” and “Genius...I just think you get right to the heart of things, but in such a clever way and so subtle.” These comments were both posted on theprose.com/cloria. Even if the numbers are sparse and I could never claim to be a quote, unquote, influencer, I firmly believe I have done just that even if you have never heard my name. You will.

On my current poetry blog and Instagram, I use the headline “If Emily Dickinson masturbated and then wrote poems about it.” I have written about sex, drugs, and hip hop. I have said things I forget the general public will see without so much as a single apology to my mother. I hide nothing, reveal beyond boundaries, and revel in the cleverness of wordplay as foreplay. I have written lines such as I haven’t shaved since/the last time we had sex call/it my mourning bush" and “at the doctor/blood pressure 96/57/doctor asks is this normal/lady/I run so low/I run solo.” I post them with the glee of a child finding the toy at the bottom of a cereal box.

I am an open book, tattooed words gracing my figure as if my body, too, shall be read. I lust after luscious words and readers that question: did she really say that? Did she just go there? My writing, my very essence, is an escape into a world of wonder. The universe should know the way my veins bleed words and my head buzzes with beats. In my childhood garage, I once garishly signed my name with the promise “I will be famous in 2003.” If I could go back there, I would turn the last zero into a two. In the words of Pusha T: “If you know, you know.”