Page 88

With the crossed-out opening removed, the page becomes a sharper, single-note joke about Jefferson's absence and the speaker's fixation on it.

What survives is much terser and cleaner than the earlier transcript suggested. The humor now comes from the mismatch between Jefferson never coming up and the speaker's insistence that he must still be thinking about him.

Funny how Jefferson's name never came up — I bet he's thinking about me. With the struck-through opening stanza removed, the book closes on a single compact joke: the absent friend, the speaker's certainty he's still on the other mind. A paranoid last word that refuses to stop being funny.