By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Sun, moon, rain, electricity, tribal memory, and sainthood all crowd together around a woman who chooses the interior and stays there.
The poem admits that holding sun and moon in the same frame is difficult, which is exactly why the figure at its center matters. She is imagined through harsh and luminous identities at once, never purely blessed and never merely romantic. The final claim that every saint belongs in some way to a cult strips holiness of innocence and leaves devotion looking dangerous.
The page strains to hold opposites at once -- 'The Cornora of the Moon / Delicious in blackness', 'Hey Sun and Moon / It is tough writing / about them both at the same time' -- around a woman who 'went for the interior,, / like a scared and blond Indian' and 'just stayed'. Tribal violence shadows her steadfastness ('Mohawk would be vicious enough,. / she sticks,. cause they don't / have any kids left'), before the hard closing claim that 'there is no such / thing as a saint / that was not,, in some way, / a part of a cult'.