By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This faded duplicate of "The Hand Of The Gun" repeats the page 245 sequence of perfection, death, weather, cross, ring, song, dream, void, and self-claim.
The repetition matters as manuscript evidence. Once the OCR noise is removed, the page reads less like a new poem than a parallel draft preserving the same pressure points and the same stuttering insistence on 'it it it.'
A faded near-twin of page 245's draft, the line 'Only other death on the ridge' here cleaned to 'Only other death on the ridge' and otherwise reproducing the same sequence: perfection, the weather, 'our particular cross,' the ring that 'is not a bell,' singing, 'writing home,' 'We are left a dream,' the 'it is it it it' stutter, and 'I am the best / I have ever been.' Its value is as manuscript evidence - a parallel typescript showing the poem held nearly fixed across pages, with the same pressure points and the same insistent stutter preserved rather than revised away.