Otter

Can’t stop grinding my teeth

When did it start

Probably when Lia died

Or Chicago

Or Madrid or Venice

Or over the atlantic ocean

When my brother got sick

Or the polar vortex

Or the sex dreams with

Someone no good, shouldn’t sleep with them

And won’t

But my jaw’s aching through the mornings

And at night creaks wooden

Splinters in my cheeks

Remember when Bronson got lockjaw?

He sent all the same photos with

Slack gaped O mouth to prove

It just wouldn’t shut!

And Brendan chased me through the

Church with flowers from Jewel Osco

He caught me and I threw them  in

The trash once he’d driven off,

With Bronson and his Mom,

Ghost people with chasm cavities

My throat hasps to think of.

Michael pushed us together in the rec room

Michael with the script in the rec room

Like the one I lost my virginity in

Carpet burned knees because

I flipped from the prone position

We were fifteen when we said those dirty things

And he was twenty when he jumped from the roof

Into the trees, he tried for the trees

And the police, or the security guards,

They watched him and they heard him

And I hope it was quick. I

Hope he didn’t hear himself leave.

I hear him leave every night I’m alone

I hear him in the back of my head when

I’ve drank too much and my own

Reflection makes me cry

I hear him when I get the spam emails from

The psychics I called after he left

The man who took my 99¢ a minute

From Dallas

Saying he’s watching, he loved me, he

Would always watch, would always protect

He loved me, he loves me, he

is still gone entirely and

He misses me too.

Sam’s in California with wireless microphones

telling the same jokes he told ten years ago

with the same girlfriend in the wings, laughing

though

it’s hard to keep up

with people born on a leap day.

Art;

Jimmie Durham // Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World

[ currently on view at Museo Madre in Naples, Italy ]

https://hammer.ucla.edu/fileadmin/media/exhibitions/2017/Jimmie_Durham/1_JD9980.jpg