By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Crossroads gives a woman a flash of mistaken identity and a snake-quick road, then turns inward to lies, resolve, and the shock of recognizing what has been done.
The road turning quick as a snake makes decision feel both natural and dangerous. Her thought "maybe I am him" is not sustained revelation but a brief self-distortion, immediately corrected and then made worse by lies. Once the mind is made up, distance changes meaning, and the hardest task becomes facing the action already taken.
'Crossroads' watches a woman decide against herself. She 'sid to herself / She had not a chance' while 'Watching the road turn / Quick as a snake,' and the strange thought 'maybe I am him' surfaces only to be revoked: 'She was wrong.' The poem widens into an aphorism on self-deception - 'lies are twisted / To yourself / or from others' - and on the irreversibility of resolve: 'It is a long way away / when you have / made up your mind.' The hard closing imperative, 'Brace yourself / Hard / To know what you have done,' makes recognition the cost of the decision. Source spelling 'sid' is preserved.