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By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This 'The Best' variant develops the country-girl voice through vacent stomach, male looking, Ronald Regan jelly beans, the river yellow canister, remembered childhood, shame, and moving star-sections in America.
The cleaned text strengthens the progression from intimate body detail to public shame and cosmic-national structure. The voice holds embarrassment, defiance, and cultural observation together.
A continuation of 'The Best' that pushes the country-girl voice from intimacy toward shame and cosmic scale. She carries her 'vacent stomach / to the store' and still smiles when a man 'things he sees me / eight inches down from my nose,' then reaches for 'Ronald Regan jelly beans / out of my family's three hundred / year old river yellow canister.' The middle insists on memory and shame -- 'no shame,, the lies that continue,' 'I know about shame, others shame, / my shame; ... real shame' -- before opening out: 'I am down under in America where their / are sections of stars, that actually move / like nations and make structures.' Source spellings ('vacent,' 'things,' 'their,' 'Regan') are preserved.