By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The poem moves through time, place, wavering eyes, possible violence, beer, music, and walking, ending by insisting that the speaker's life has everything to do with itself.
The corrected transcript makes the page's restless logic clearer. Its central turn is the preference for a walk and familiarity with strangeness over music or performance.
Titled 'Escondito,' the poem opens on a paradox of motion: 'If I cross time, and do it fast / Don't I expect to be in the same place,' speed leaving the speaker exactly where he started. It catches a charged ambiguity in the eyes, 'the wavering / for the kill, or maybe for a beer,' violence and ordinary appetite indistinguishable. The ars-poetica close prefers plainness over performance - solitude is 'difficult / as a drum lead; it is not music: / Rather a walk' - and ends on a fine reversal about 'familiarity / with strangeness, that has nothing / to do with you, while your life, / has everything to do / with it.'