By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"Consintration" chases something that has just vanished, labels the impossible as CANCER, and turns loss into a cosmic problem of needing sky, earth, and the two opposite ends of whatever matters most.
The poem insists that the missing thing cannot be found by direct effort, which gives concentration a paradoxical shape from the start. The handwritten CANCER makes the impossible feel bodily and threatening before the solar system spins into view. What finally matters is not an answer but the pressure of "stuff that crosses you," the forces that interrupt and define a life.
'Consintration' chases something that has vanished -- 'Where did it go... It was just here' -- and warns that 'You do not think / about you do not / find it', so effort defeats itself. The handwritten 'CANCER' makes the impossible bodily before the poem widens cosmically: 'The solar system has spun', and now 'you need the sky' while 'the earth / needs you more than ever', leaving the speaker reaching for 'two ends / of the opisite' amid 'Stuff that crosses you'.