By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This page, titled 'Start The Silence,' is an inventory of abandonment, asking someone to leave behind every domestic object until absence itself becomes the subject.
The repeated 'leave' gives the poem its force. Pools, tools, a basketball hoop, a swing, the grape vine, and money all become proof that material traces remain even after the person is gone. The preserved source oddities keep the page abrupt and unpolished.
'Start The Silence' is an inventory of abandonment built on the repeated imperative 'Leave': 'Leave your flowers / Leave your plants / Leave your pool,, / and leave your steps', down to 'the boys basketball hoop' and 'the swing of / the south sum'. The domestic catalogue mounts until the real charge surfaces - the departed had 'Mot one single fight', 'Just money,:' - and the poem ends on the blunt 'now your gonec'. The preserved source forms ('Mo', 'Mot', 'south sum', 'gonec') keep the page abrupt and unpolished, a list of leavings that finally turns silence itself into the subject.