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Two more-- "Aardvarks"--

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the person who-- the editor who
accepted this for the magazine

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said that he thought
I named it this

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so that I would come
first in the list of poems

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that they have published
over the years.

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[LAUGHTER]

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It was a new thought to me.

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"It's summer, and the
Jitney is packed."

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The jitney is the
bus that we take

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from East Hampton to New York,
a three-hour drive usually.

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"It's summer, and the Jitney
is packed, every seat taken

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except for the one across
the aisle in which a man has

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barricaded his window
seat with a briefcase

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and jacket, an act
meant to confront others

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with his superiority.

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Munching chips and
guffawing at a YouTube

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video of an obese woman riding
a scooter down a country

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road towing a younger obese
woman in a wheelchair,

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He reminds me of
a neighbor's dog

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that would steal and
bury our dog's bones,

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then growl defiantly on
his side of our fence.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Pythagoras believed
our souls ended up

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inside the bodies
of animals selected

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as rewards and punishments.

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The three giggling girls
behind me stretching their legs

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into the aisle every
time the shy attendant,

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passes forcing him
to stutter apologies

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in a thick Slavic accent--

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poodles, probably.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Pythagoras also believed
the shapes of numbers

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symbolize our significance.

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Well, sequestered here
between work and family,

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thought and dreaming,
I'm probably

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some kind of numinous
digit slowly evolving

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into, say, an aardvark
hurling down the highway

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inside a bus camouflaged as
a vodka bottle on its way

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to a barricaded future on
the far side of a fence

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where all our
significance is buried."

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