The Skin of Our Teeth
My
youngest brother is being sued by a dentist,
Whose
finger he chomped off during a root canal.
My oldest
brother is a runaway and last I heard,
He owed
five digits to a West Island loan shark.
Our
mother’s been diagnosed with dementia, and
I’m sort
of glad. My brothers and I are embarrassing.
Our
father’s long gone. Made off to PEI with a foreign
Exchange
student. Last I heard, they were unhappy.
You hear
it often: family’s the most important thing,
And I don’t
disagree, but I don’t exactly agree, either.
My oldest
sister – the exception – is doing quite well.
She sells
pictures of her feet to perverts on the internet.
I’d do
the same, but our youngest brother chomped off
Two toes
on my left foot when we were young children.
I earn O.K.
money participating in clinical studies all over.
They put
me up in a four-star hotel once, which was nice.
Butterfingers
Wintertime
in Montreal is O.K. if you love the
Cold a
lot and hate yourself a little. A locally
Renowned
psychologist observed that the
Number of
seasonal affective depression
Diagnoses
has been trending downward
This last
decade. She said we have global
Warming
to thank for that. Regular old
Depression,
however, is on the rise, and the
Locally
renowned psychologist claims it has
Everything
to do with high-speed internet and
Dopamine.
I can’t say I agree with her,
Even
though I am a depressed internet user.
My best
friend calls me Butterfingers, a wisecrack
About how
I can’t seem to hold on to anything
Good.
She’s the happiest person I know, though
I don’t
know that many people, happy or otherwise.
I eat ice
cream in the wintertime for the brain freeze.
I finally
went ahead and bought Blundstones, the
Fawn-coloured
ones. They’re comfortable, though
I would
not recommend you wear them to bed, no.
Sue J. Levon writes and resides in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, Canada. Their work has appeared in Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review, and The Antigonish Review, among others.