Page 387
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Railroad noise, an eight-by-four-foot kitchen window, February 1976 in Bethel Park, nightly tornadoes, and a last sparrow across snow turn inflation into weathered domestic pressure.
The setting is precise enough to feel documentary, yet the poem keeps slipping into elemental disturbance. The lingering canyon and constant trains place the house inside a geography of motion and echo. The handwritten measurement and corrected tornado keep the page visibly worked-over while 'Just new wind' makes repeated upheaval sound both minimized and inescapable.
The enclosed poem itself - the 'favorate one' the letters promised - 'Along The Track Of Inflation,' subtitled 'Frames.' It measures the Summit House precisely: trains 'all the time,' a 'kitchen window' that is 'eight by four FEET' (the unit forced in by hand), set 'seventy five yards / From the skirt of a lingering canyon.' Then it dates and unsettles itself - 'It is feburary, 1976, in Bethel Park / Pennsylvania' - where 'as far as i am / concerned, there has been a tornado / every night.' The storm is downgraded and made permanent at once: 'Just new wind / when the last sparrow flew across the snow,' a small final image of cold departure closing the documentary window.