Sid Yiddish got a surprise in the ladies’ room at Cafe Express last fall. Someone had taken a knife and slashed a big X through his poem “For the Love of Man (For Jobie Hughes).” Yiddish took it remarkably well. “It’s quite a compliment,” he says. “If they steal it or make something on it, it inspired the person enough to do something.”
Gnomish with a scraggly beard and heroic gut, Yiddish seems naturally disposed to showy display. He’s performed throughout the country as a poet, musician, and performance artist. He recently throat sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” for the Lovable Losers Literary Revue, a club mourning the Cubs’ 100 years without a pennant, at a Mexican restaurant in Wrigleyville. Next month he’ll be in a display window of the Flatiron Building performing “Suite for Furby on Shofar in D Minor,” a solo piece for his 13 Furby dolls. “I play shofar and jaw harp and toy instruments like See ‘n Say, kitchen utensils—I throw things at them, speak to them in Furby language, do whatever I can to make them move.”
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Wes Heine, a filmmaker, poet, and musician who plays with Yiddish in a band called $2 Cockroach and contributed poems to the second phase, helped Yiddish convince Gallery Cabaret in Bucktown and Myopic Books in Wicker Park to allow poetry in their washrooms. “At first they didn’t know what I was talking about,” Heine says. “They asked, ‘You’re not going to read in there, are you?’” (Coll in fact has organized readings in public toilets.) But Heine got the go-ahead once he explained the project. “As long as we do all the work, they don’t care.”
I went to take a shit
only a little motion sensor that was supposed to flush when I stood up
from where America puts its dream on the chopping block
Yiddish will perform “Don’t Worry, Goat (Bartman’s Only Looking for a Baseball to Catch),” a parody of Yoko Ono’s “Don’t Worry, Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for a Hand in the Snow),” and mediate communication with past Cubs players using a Ouija board. aMon 9/8, 7:30 PM, El Jardin, 3335 N. Clark, 773-528-6775 or lovablelosersliteraryrevue.com.FA
Fri 9/12, 8 PM, and Sat 9/13, 3 PM, Debonair Social Club window, 1575 N. Milwaukee, 312-345-6963 or theflatironproject.com/smartshow.html.FA
Sun 9/28, 8 PM, Green Mill, 4802 N. Broadway, 773-878-5552 or greenmilljazz.com/poetryslam.html, $6, 21+.
