By Sofia Tong

The bounce and rhythm of words, the intricate stressing of rhymes, the flow and ebb of phrases accompanied by the quiet patter of snaps: the sounds of a poetry slam are unmistakable.

The TeenWord poetry slam was hosted for its second year Saturday night by junior Josh Grossman. It took place in the Brookline Teen Center’s gym and was sponsored by Brookline Booksmith, Anna’s Taqueria and J.P. Licks.

Teams from schools throughout Massachusetts came to share their poetry, with a total of 19 poets performing.

The slam had five judges that each gave a score ranging from one to 10. For each poet’s final score, the highest and lowest score were eliminated and the three remaining scores were added. The six poets with the highest scores received books or gift cards donated by Brookline Booksmith.

As MC, Grossman cautioned the judges not to be swayed by the audience or allow “score creep,” the tendency for scores to get higher as a slam goes on. If the judges took too long to decide on scores, he transitioned between the poems with bad knock-knock jokes framed by profuse apologies for their low quality.

The slam started out with Nick from Urban Science, with an eloquent if understated poem about race. Grossman then came onstage and said they had forgotten the “sacrificial poet,” whose role was to perform as a baseline for scoring for the judges. Nick was later given the “Most Screwed Over by the MC” award.

The audience was warm and supportive, snapping vigorously at lines that resonated with them and shouting out “You got it!” when a poet faltered with their lines or “Listen to the poem!” when a judge gave a low score.

With topics including commentary on racism, sexism, homophobia and the pain of depression, the poets did not hesitate to plunge into the darkest and most intense parts of their experiences.

Even when two poems covered similar subjects, they often combined to create multi-dimensional portraits of the issues they covered.

“Mom, you’re the reason that I chase the sun” clashed with “I will never forgive you, mother, because you deserve it”; “The only art I can say anything about is your lips stretching into a smile,” collided with “I just don’t know how to love you back”;  “This is survival, and no one is going to help you pull yourself out” mixed with “Here, feeling like a shipwreck, it’s hard to believe anyone called me unsinkable.”

Junior Jaime Serrato-Marks performed his poem “Mexican’t.” Throughout the poem, Serrato-Marks spoke of how his Mexican-American heritage played into his identity. He started by describing how he was “Mexican’t,” unable to behave in a typically Mexican way, such as speaking Spanish fluently or being able to jump a fence. But later, he stopped this train of thought and posed a question: “But if I’m Mexican’t, what is Mexican?”

Serrato-Marks then went on to describe the incredible discrimination Mexicans face.

“Mexican isn’t about the heritage or the skin,” Serrato-Marks said in his poem. “Mexican is when you feel like you don’t belong.”

“Geometry in Technicolor,” performed by freshman Bailee Mendez Rainey, detailed a situation where a girl in Mendez Rainey’s math class slipped her a note that said “you are white.” In the poem, she described wishing she was colorblind and that everything about her was gray, “the color of silence.”

“But it doesn’t work that way,” Mendez Rainey said.

Grossman finished off the slam with a poem of his own, a humorous ode to Captain Crunch cereal.

The night ended after prizes were awarded for those who finished in fourth place and higher. Fourth place was tied between students from Billerica and Wayland High School, third went to a Billerica student, second went to Serrato-Marks and first was won by a student from Cristo Rey Boston High School.

Sofia Tong can be contacted at [email protected].