Page 372
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Out in space, quiet turns loud inside the head, exotic places flatten into sameness, and the promise of the next stop stops leaving anyone alone.
The comparison to being black in one's hometown makes travel feel racially charged even before the poem expands into "space." What matters is not scenery but psychic pressure: silence thickens until it becomes noise inside the skull. The next stop should promise relief, yet anticipation itself becomes another form of disturbance.
'No time change': 'Like a black in his home town / You got to watch your ass / when you get out there in space.' Quiet gets louder in your head; all middle people about the same; happiness at seeing the next stop does not leave you alone. 'And first comes the thumb.'