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 my small hand seized thoughts attended by the wind, when reguarding purpose rather than a yearning distance Long before I was born 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 too 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) Sometime after speech made paragraphs, Out of give, get; gallant, and gain;

Original Scan

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

Headed 'A SIOBHAN POEM', this opening movement grows a self 'out of the taste in the sand' in 'the wildest in the western world', watching 'white birds cover colors and crests' before turning to a 'nomadic' father the speaker both craves and resents: 'I wanted a strong dad / So I could kick his shins / And poke his eyes out too'.

The poem founds identity in elemental sensation - sand, ocean, fire 'in the soul', the 'mystic sense of the sea's, / hovering creation' that 'hurt then healed' - before language even arrives, since the self forms 'Long before I was born to dance my way out of walking'. The father is the wound at its center, imagined as driven nomadic by a world of 'only desperate women and weak men', and the wish for him is inseparable from the violence aimed at him: the same line wants a strong dad in order to attack him. The parenthetical aside 'How smart is societys' voice... when living infinity isn't a choice' sets a determinist pressure against the speaker's bid for self-invention. The page breaks off mid-construction on the alliterative ledger 'give, get; gallant, and gain', a voice still assembling itself. Source spellings and punctuation ('reguarding', 'societys'', 'sea's,') are kept as the scan shows them.