Two more-- "Aardvarks"--
the person who-- the editor who accepted this for the magazine
said that he thought I named it this
so that I would come first in the list of poems
that they have published over the years.
[LAUGHTER]
It was a new thought to me.
"It's summer, and the Jitney is packed."
The jitney is the bus that we take
from East Hampton to New York, a three-hour drive usually.
"It's summer, and the Jitney is packed, every seat taken
except for the one across the aisle in which a man has
barricaded his window seat with a briefcase
and jacket, an act meant to confront others
with his superiority.
Munching chips and guffawing at a YouTube
video of an obese woman riding a scooter down a country
road towing a younger obese woman in a wheelchair,
He reminds me of a neighbor's dog
that would steal and bury our dog's bones,
then growl defiantly on his side of our fence.
[LAUGHTER]
Pythagoras believed our souls ended up
inside the bodies of animals selected
as rewards and punishments.
The three giggling girls behind me stretching their legs
into the aisle every time the shy attendant,
passes forcing him to stutter apologies
in a thick Slavic accent--
poodles, probably.
[LAUGHTER]
Pythagoras also believed the shapes of numbers
symbolize our significance.
Well, sequestered here between work and family,
thought and dreaming, I'm probably
some kind of numinous digit slowly evolving
into, say, an aardvark hurling down the highway
inside a bus camouflaged as a vodka bottle on its way
to a barricaded future on the far side of a fence
where all our significance is buried."