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published August 2009

Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz's work can be found in McSweeney’s Internet Tendancies, Rattle, Pank, Barrelhouse, Monkeybicycle, and decomP, among others. She is the author of the non-fiction book Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam (Soft Skull Press, 2008) as well as five books of poetry, most recently Everything is Everything (Write Bloody Press, 2010). When not on tour, she can be found loitering at NYC's Bowery Poetry Club, where she helps run the Tuesday night poetry slam series, NYC-Urbana, and dates the surly barkeep, poet Shappy Seasholtz. For more information, please visit her website: www.aptowicz.com.

Not As Smart As I Think I Am

by

I know that the “57” in Heinz 57 refers to the num­ber
of pick­les that the com­pany used to sell, and that
gra­ham crack­ers and corn flakes were orig­i­nally
cre­ated to pre­vent mas­tur­ba­tion, but I can’t tell you
the dif­fer­ence between a seal and sea lion. Or
the dif­fer­ence between an alli­ga­tor and a croc­o­dile,
though I think it has to do some­thing with the shape
of their snouts. Pumas and leop­ards are the same cats
with dif­fer­ent col­ored coats, and some­thing called
“the wing­less fly” lives in the Antarctica, but I only
know this because I saw it on a PBS kid’s show once,
and also, I had to google the spelling of Antarctica
because my com­puter dic­tio­nary told me I wasn’t
even close. You know, they say that there is a part
of the human chest that if you strike it hard enough
the person’s heart explodes. This sounds like such a lie
that I have to believe it’s the truth. If I were sci­ence,
I’d never tell any­one where this place is. If I were sci­ence,
I’d have named this place after you.

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