Page 170
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Under the title 'U think,' the page captures a charged social scene of insult, touch, racial naming, and hatred redirected toward the speaker.
The corrected title and cleaned indentation make the confrontation easier to follow without smoothing its volatility. The poem still reads as a compact transfer of social force from one body to another.
Titled 'U think', this is a compact confrontation poem. It opens mid-gesture - 'Insult,, casting my hand aside' - and quotes the flashpoint: 'There I told you / to get your hand off her shoulder'. A bare line of racial naming, 'Denver Chinese Mexican', set 'On the Ohio River', locates the scene without explaining it. The page ends on a transfer of feeling rather than a resolution: 'The hatered strong enough / To be transformed to me', so the speaker absorbs the very hatred the encounter generated. Source spelling ('hatered') is preserved.