Performance poetry runs through my veins. I cut my teeth as a writer and performer at The Green Mill in Chicago, where the audience is famous for stomping or snapping slam poets off the mic. Three years in a row (2015—2017) I competed on a Chicago team at the National Poetry Slam. Nationwide, stages have welcomed me, individually and as an ensemble member.
“Andy Karol brings smart writing to the stage and delivers her poems with a gentle power that holds her audience. Her intricate, honest poems are evidence of her attention to language. In a very short time, she has risen to a level that demands attention.” — Marc Smith, Poetry Slam Founder
Fail-Safe
These dreams you hold onto are rent-to-own.
Pay the blood bank
until the red-lines fade to black.
You’ve got good veins, kid,
but you’ll still feel the burn.
This is why
you need to steer clear of the witch hunt;
your magic is most at stake
when there are crowds you’ve got to run from.
But these dreams
are the saving type, a revival
every morning the dawn
breaks open the Red Sea.
These are the days
you can’t get the song out of your head
from the last person who told you
you’re doing life right.
Your windpipe hasn’t learned the difference
between this tune and a tornado.
You can talk yourself down from flight
into any wreckage.
This is why I wrote you a poem that’s made out of mirrors.
Stop looking behind you every time you smile
at the glass; grace is meant for you
as much as for anyone else.
Stop standing around like you have a lover
who won’t touch you enough.
You deserve the most from yourself.
Move forward, move on,
move
until there’s no time to worry
about the parts of you left behind.
Steady, now.
This type of balance is new for you.
This is how you learn to breathe again:
slow down
until the stitches unravel from your side,
but don’t stop completely.
The sand is gonna spill from your hourglass
all over the place—
don’t apologize
for the space you’re taking up now;
there’s nothing polite in forgetting
you’ve belonged here since the day you were born.
Even on a bad day.
Remember, you’re not falling apart;
it’s just an out of body experience.
But you don’t have to be out of it
for good.
Your truth
is the fail-safe.
Even when your sand trails go in circles.
Or you’re pouring into sandbags
like you can stop a hurricane from confessing
to the seaside.
There’s never a better time to save yourself.
This truth
is too holy for sacrifice.
It’s the part of you
that can’t give up on those dreams.
Your skin is built around its own church.
Don’t tell me you’re not a believer
until you’ve looked at the night sky
and introduced yourself before making a wish.
We all want to think the sky takes us so seriously,
but look at how the stars move without you.
The constellations are holding the wildest search party
of your dreams,
and your echo makes them dance stupid.
Don’t let your own shoes get stuck to the floor.
Take off the dress that everyone else is wearing,
and tell them you’ve never looked lovelier.
Firefly
(In memory of the Upstairs Lounge fire on June 24th, 1973.)
Every city is a mausoleum built by the hands of the living.
The night I was shaped into a thousand bricks
someone had already called me Heaven,
said, Build me until there is no more work to do.
I told that sticky air,
I wish I didn’t have to get up for work tomorrow.
The night caught me in my biggest lie,
sent the devil up the stairs so fast
there wasn’t time for prayer to reach my lips.
The room served a round of Molotov cocktails,
roared so hot the air pulled up the floor.
Our polyester suits burned,
and skin melted into red
as the wallpaper curled into tight fists
that had never planned to fight fair.
When we tried to escape,
the caged windows securing us from dizzy falls
set our fate on fire,
kept the arsonist on the other side the safest.
My friends blow-torched into dusty air
as the street below watched lovers turn to saints.
I knew that only embers would make it
through those bars as I whispered to you,
Catch me while I light the night.
I have never felt so graceful until now.
Wait for me.
I have never wanted you more than I do now.
Have you ever seen a firefly
fall
from
the sky?
It’s like watching magic die too young.
They say it was only sixteen minutes long.
Who says hell lasts an eternity?
New Orleans was breathing us in
as we exhaled our ghosts into moonlight.
No one plays their saxophone on the corner now
without us inhaled into every pitch.
I dare you to ask for another tune and tell them their song
was written without my grace notes.
Tell me the hymns we sang that Sunday morning
became a funeral march
because God was sleeping in
and a fight song is the only way to wake Them.
I will tell you how our ashes
were smoke-stacked into jokes.
Put them into fruit jars, someone said across the airwaves.
Death must’ve left them hungry for some laughter,
the way it crackles in the throat.
But I will tell you how my reverend friend’s screams
shot straight down the fire escape
when those window bars trapped him in their funeral pyre.
He was left there for the morning birds,
his ash face on every front page.
The flames were out—why cover him up?
Why even cover this story?
You know it’s a queer bar, they said,
You know they’re just queers.
In the end, thirty-two dead.
Unknown white male, number one.
Unknown white male, number two.
Unknown white male,
number three.
Tell my mother where she can find me.
Or was she never looking?
Tell her I’ve been built into this city
my marrow in its bones,
and I have never left.
I am never
leaving.