Page 18

By Jack Joseph Smith

A SIOBHAN POEM To know justice in my name I grew out of the taste in the sand In a place film recommends As the wildest in the western world The ocean is a fear for those whose feelings fail To acknowledge the beginnings of fire in the soul But I watched white birds cover colors and crests While the mystic sense of the sea's, hovering creation, hurt then healed For ny small hand seized thoughts attended by the wind, when reguarding purpose rather than a yearning distance Long before I was bom to dance my way out of walking, even computers began to contrive my father as nomadic (Perhaps seeing with the same four seasons " only desperate women and weak men was +oo painful under his sun) Yet I wanted a strong dad | So I could kick his shins And poke his eyes out too (How smart is societys' voice, like in a chant . - when living infinity isn't a choice) A Sometime after speech made paragraphs, out of give, get; gallant; and gain;

Original Scan

Page 18

AI Interpretation

GPT

The poem roots a speaker's sense of justice in sea, wind, family hurt, and a defiant desire to invent a self beyond inherited weakness.

The opening joins sand, ocean, birds, and fire in the soul, so identity begins in elemental sensations rather than abstraction. The father appears as both desired strength and source of disappointment, and the violent fantasy toward him shows how badly that lack has bitten into the speaker. Because the ending breaks into fragments, the voice feels still in formation, trying to make language large enough for memory, rage, and purpose.


Claude

First half of a long Irish-inflected address to 'Siobhan', moving from childhood sea-fear through a harsh portrait of a nomadic father.

The poem builds a mythology around a single addressee while letting the family it names stay unromanticized. 'I wanted a strong dad / So I could kick his shins' is the giveaway line — the wish and the violence are the same wish. The page sets up an inheritance poem that keeps refusing standard inheritance consolations.