The Body and the Blood of Host

By Jack Joseph Smith

The Body and the Blood of Host: He walked up to me on the roaring cliff and said “ya' mow ya! look like Marlon: Brandos ma! girl friend likes -your chin® Host: liked that Canadian.(a') with a grim * When we took off North along the sea Host's was the best 50 chevy" you-ever did see” Anywhere-we went. Host's steel tempered blue eyes; fooled everybody with their: gray And‘ Hosti.always got a-job right: off after Big Sur he tore me away from the graveyard shift doing process'en steel outside of red and yellow lettered Haywards out where the wasteland begins in Niles, California I liked the foreman too He was Italian Brooklin and young for the work he'd done at 28 But right off again Seattle had to be next And the He Host on arrival went to laying concrete _ I went to some Australian run shacks on Mount Crystal below the Rainier Hada baby with a lady during the seed of 64, and didn't pick up the Host again, until the 66 of Toranto A fast 67 had me sending off a note From Hollywood explaning my way out of the star trip “It was necessary Cause of two things he'd said around the Canadian streets Firsts a kid was hustling beer cases for change off a conveyorl, The thick black eyed big belt pellied boss came out burst stemmered from his lack of sw: and said “git® Host took his huge hand to his hawk nose at the ridge of his thumb. and said “he stays" CAUSE A PENNY SAVED IS A PENNY EARNED Second; a past friend of Hosts came back from some kind of college to be & journalist Host didn't care for war, but'in front of company asked the money man why he wasn't doing what baby writers a ing through the doors lways say their gonna do
After Hollywood for an explanation, I never heard from Host again: Just over my head was that air on our first slide out of Sur - That Chevy had no top; and I kept feeling my hand weaving across four faces Not quite being free, but through our twentish adolescent: slash, believing it Louise, a wife, and Jack in the body of a Chevy Host Years later when it was all over calling myself theatrical I called into Host's Toranto familys from a four in the morning Vodka Pemsylvania His brother wanted a tracer ‘on me so bad, I could taste it, though my telephone tongue kept on.singing the blues of missing my man He, however; had been shot down in New Orleans LONG PAUSE When I kmew Hosts he was always 26 Sailed the Atlantic Loved the chaos of London, and as Host put it, ®sitting in tenements occupied by music and little kids" And Host had been good on the Caribbean, like Gorden Lightfoot singing "Silver: Heels® But back, way back in Seattle; + unhostile and fine, I stole into Host's trunk It was six by two by three, and I badly needed a white > shirt for a dishwashing job: Not a God Damn piece: of cloth Just ‘typed manuscripts up to the lid That were never ‘mentioned _—

Original Scan

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AI Interpretation

GPT

A narrative elegy for a charismatic friend called Host, tracing their shared journey through Big Sur, Haywards, Seattle, Toronto, and Hollywood in a 1950 Chevy, ending with the discovery that Host was shot dead in New Orleans and that his trunk held only typed manuscripts — never mentioned.

The poem uses the Eucharistic title to frame friendship as sacrament, with Host's body and blood literalized through his physical presence, his blue eyes, and his violent death, while the hidden manuscripts suggest an interior life that was never shared.

Claude

An elegy for a road companion named Host, whose Eucharistic name the poem takes literally - his body broken across cities, his story consumed by the survivor who tells it. They meet on 'the roaring cliff' ('ya look like Marlon Brando'), run north in 'the best 50 chevy you ever did see,' and scatter through Big Sur, Niles, Seattle, Toronto. Host is remembered by two acts of defiance: protecting a kid hustling beer cases from a bullying boss - 'he stays' - mockingly capped by 'CAUSE A PENNY SAVED IS A PENNY EARNED'; and needling a college friend turned journalist about whether he is 'doing / what baby writers always say their gonna do.' Years later the speaker calls 'Host's Toranto family' from 'a four in the morning Vodka Pennsylvania' to learn Host 'had been shot down in New Orleans,' the news set off by a typographic 'LONG PAUSE.' The poem closes on a theft turned revelation: needing 'a white shirt for a dishwashing job,' the speaker once opened Host's trunk and found 'Not a God Damn piece of cloth / Just typed manuscripts up to the lid / That were never mentioned.'

The topless Chevy 'had no top' is the controlling image - exposure and speed, youth with nothing over its head, the hand 'weaving across four faces / Not quite being free, / but... believing it.' That belief in freedom is exactly the road-myth the poem both honors and quietly punctures. The structural masterstroke is the 'LONG PAUSE,' a stage direction printed into the verse so the poem physically halts at the moment of the death it cannot absorb. And the trunk full of hidden manuscripts reframes the whole piece: Host carried a secret literary life the speaker never knew, so the elegy doubles as the book Host never published, the survivor performing the sacrament of finally mentioning what 'were never mentioned.'