By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A compressed poem of romantic rejection where the mind is pitched out of shape with reality, fantasy and devil intertwine, and loveliness begins to freeze under the threat of lifeless hands.
A short lyric of rejection in which the beloved's turning away dislodges the speaker's grip on the real. The mind, 'out of shape with reality,' is pitched 'out to...' an unfinished void, and the speaker pleads to 'Fantasy' to 'run me near you,' addressing his own ruin as 'Devil dear far away from here.' The terms grow chillingly physical: 'Easyness is a caress / As loveliness asks how long it will be alive / Where lifeless hands may effectively strangle,' so that tenderness and killing share one set of fingers, before the flat last line, 'Loveliness begins to freeze.' The trailing 'i.' on the page leaves the poem suspended mid-breath, as if it cannot finish thawing.