WEBVTT

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Hello Thank you, Lisa
for the introduction

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and Frances and
the Poetry Center.

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And everyone has
been so kind to me

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and I'm very, very
happy to be here.

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With that introduction
it made me

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wish that I brought a poem
that I didn't, but I'll

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tell you what the title is.

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I've been writing poems, ant
poems recently and one of them

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the title is an ant in the mouth
of Madonna behind locked doors.

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And I'll just let
you imagine the poem

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and read it some
other point in time.

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So I'll start with a few ant
poems this one is called,

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We the heathens.

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Last night we go to
have Chinese for dinner,

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and my friend who is
visiting from another planet

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is horrified and
perhaps a little excited

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also, until I explain to her
that we are having Chinese food

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not Chinese people.

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We go to a place that serves
not dumpling soup which I love,

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but soup dumpling with
which I am unfamiliar.

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The soup is actually
inside of rich dumpling

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and everyone develops their
own system of eating it.

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As we poke our
chopsticks voraciously

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into the folds of the crispy
fried whole exploded fish which

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is delicious, it
becomes clear to me

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that we would have no
right to be shocked,

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or mortified, or outraged,
or even surprised, or upset,

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should some creature
from another planet

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descend upon the
Earth, pluck our people

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off the ground fry us up tearing
away at our flesh with relish.

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My friend Morton, a
sweet and gentle man,

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is sitting quietly beside me
with his uneaten hamburger.

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I don't know how he
managed to get himself

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a hamburger in a
Chinese restaurant,

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but there he sits and there sits
as hamburger with the top off.

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Morton says he wants
live ants on his burger

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but does not want to go
hunting for ants himself.

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So he's waiting for
the ants to come

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to the burger at which point
he will put the top bun back on

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and eat.

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I tell him that he will
probably have better luck

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with that outside.

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And he says, that's
a good idea, thanks.

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And then goes outside
with his hamburger

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and that's the last
I ever see of him.

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