Page 33
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The scan-verified poem turns a birthday gathering near train tracks into a compressed accident scene, with children, a stopped car, a paralitic family member, and an oldest lady halted at the door.
Removing letterhead noise and restoring All here makes the poem's chant-like sequence clearer. The plain lineation lets the train's glass, steell, brass, and frozen family members build dread without explanatory connective tissue.
Short verse poem - The train moved nicely then / swinging through the middle lands - Ruby at ten, David, James, Bob staying out on the tracks, big train with wide eyes for glass and big lips for steel looking like brass. Seven in the drive-in with one paralytic child, an old lady pebble-stopped looking back on doom. A compressed family-on-the-tracks nightmare.