Page 23
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"Ahoy" revises the holler material through rifle, Grateful Dead, coal shale, family money, deer, handwritten place markers, and distance until the banks themselves seem to remember what the speaker failed to keep.
The glimmer is still there, but now it is tangled with commerce, sequence, and inheritance, as if even vision has been monetized by coal. Wyoming and the Moon remain rival fantasies, while the handwritten CAVERN and HER annotations pull the page toward buried place and personal loss. The closing mention of her bones gives the changed smell along the banks a grave-like permanence.
'Ahoy' reworks the holler material with 'the rifel on my / shoulder, a little bit of the Grateful Dead,' the glimmer now read as 'a river running through the / shale of coal where ... it ment money / for family.' Wyoming again beats the Moon, the deer 'timing is close to true,' but 'taking / the minutes to walk with her, explaining the danger / was a mistake' now that 'you are far away.' The banks' changed smell turns grave-like - 'except for HER bones' - with handwritten 'CAVERN,' 'hundreded,' and 'Virginia' pulling the page toward buried place.