By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"Across The Ally" turns drunken, racially charged uncertainty about a girl into advice about carrying first love as a lifelong dream.
The speaker is wrecked and visually unreliable, and the handwritten insertion makes the opening more volatile before the poem settles into an older certainty about desire. The crossed-out peaking leaves the line stranger and more self-exposing: he is just, just like a genus. The poem links twelve-year-old love to a code of persistence: go steady, stay with one, keep the dream in hand.
'Across The Ally' opens drunk and visually unreliable, guessing at a glimpsed woman's race - 'Maybe she is Spanish, Black' then the handwritten outburst 'shit Asian oh my god,' admitting 'I'am so fucked up,, she might / be white.' From that wreckage the speaker drops into an older certainty, 'I knew when I was in love / at twelve years old,' and the poem hardens into a code of persistence: 'Go steady as you go / Stick with one / till they tell / you no,' then 'Pick the dream up / Keep it with you / It will never end.'