By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The page turns a reciprocal exchange between two people into a brief vanishing act: they move through ordinary signs of motion, disappear from the physical world for a moment, and return amused by the trick.
The corrected transcript clarifies the poem's small scale and playfulness. Its 'slight of hand' is not just a trick but a way two people momentarily escape conflict and stand alone with the Earth.
The lightest of the 'Slight of hand' poems stages a two-person standoff as choreography: 'I do this and you don't do that / Then I don't do that and you do this / Then we both leave it at that'. The pair drift 'between horses and Cameros', old and modern mounts, and 'Just for a moment we disappear / from the physical, all alone / with this Earth'. The trick is a shared exit rather than deception - the speaker ends 'at least amused / at which ever way / we've gone', content with vanishing whichever direction it takes.