By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This page pleads for distance from a girl whose sideways glance, strange `Heaver`, and glory threaten to replace thought with image and pull the speaker back into a younger fight.
The poem reads like self-defense against beauty. The corrected transcript preserves the odd source forms, which make the threat feel typed into the page rather than smoothed into standard language.
'Any Girl' is a prayer to be left unmoved. The danger is a single 'glance', a sideways look, 'The stream from Heaver' and 'The glory that takes) you away' - even the stray ink mark after 'takes' reads like the speaker flinching mid-line. Beauty here is not desire but disarmament: 'sticks and stones', 'The loss of thought', 'The replacement of image'. He begs her off ('Stay away girl') so he can keep fighting 'As if I was young / without caring', equating love with the surrender of a hard-won numbness.