My Mouth Is a Hole in My Face
Lorri Jackson, signed by author
$20.00

At one of the bars steps away from Around the Coyote: Estelles, The Hot House, or the Borderline, was the first time I heard Lorrie Jackson’s performance pieces. She was an older woman, about 40-ish, with dark hair and dark eyes. Her poetry and performance were even darker. I have needed the shield of poetry to express the dark places in my life and in my soul. Lorrie Jackson didn’t need that. Her words, raw and angry, came at me like a hail of bullets. Lorrie Jackson’s words pierced and wounded. She demurred with the force of a hailstorm on a new car, the gentrification of her Wicker Park. She saw me in the audience and she let me know I was on her turf. She was the real artist. I was the ersatz, the oleo spread. While onstage, Lorre Jackson took a swipe at me and decried the black-clothed clergy of gentrification artists who were pushing out the pioneer artists. I had barely been in Wicker Park a few weeks and I was already getting a bad rep. For Lorrie Jackson and the other artist pioneers in Wicker Park, art was their only gig. They lived and died for their art. They were all looking not to sell-out, but to be found-out and celebrated for their artistic vision. All kinds of artists, using various mediums: acting, dancing, visual, sculptural, literary, musical, multi-media…came to WeWe (West of Western) aka Wicker Park to escape the commercialization and high rents of Old Town. Ad lib comedy groups sprang up to compete with Old Town’s Second City. In 1990 Wicker Park was the place to be and to be seen. Lorrie Jackson was an outlaw, maverick, and was more a myth than a mortal. I don’t know how much of the stories about her are true because I never knew anyone who actually knew about Lorrie Jackson’s personal life. So all I have are the memories her performance pieces and the rumors. Lorrie Jackson killed herself, it was believed to be a suicide, shortly after I heard her for the first time and she recited the poem, ‘My Mouth is a Hole in My Face’. Her words were powerful. But even so, I think most people couldn’t see that Lorrie Jackson’s frank talk-poetry was a metaphor. Lorrie Jackson didn’t just do performance poetry, Lorrie Jackson’s veiled soul could be seen in her poetry.–Aidos