Page 74

By Jack Joseph Smith

Who, forge fitted its casted usage for a wrench And not on a dear life for the street amusement Coming from an arse wrapped round the sculpture of a phallic bench And while a stop sign continues its wait for the illiterate And confrontation keeps busy with the bizarre city reunion That Black boy flips back my memory on the appearance of a copper-coin; for an early Santa Claus on sugar wine (Young Mister Shine'em On) Without a single policemen's pleasure Had also, stopped looked and listened While the vacant eyed picture of a white on white little lady wore pink socks crossing across the cobble brick laid iron rail ____street car street.____ NO ONE would be able to remember- her face protesting; ...what came out of the walls of her room... AS BEING AGAINST HER Certainly her mother- informed her about being clever- To hold the percentage of her perception sustained to time would keep her life in line Yet never to be frozen finally into isolation; she seemed the kind who had at least inscribed 1/2 of the dream in her mind And the instinct of the yesterday Black boy knew It to be against art for a face not to be traced While he then smiled to the true Which was inside manly witness? He himself was mixed up In this new forgiveness (nothing said) I had seen him turn his shoulder's down To an okey doke turn faces turn not around And I felt confident That I had traveled with his watching... past our last past A dare doom a visionery tide; STANDING ON A CREEK OF CEMENT Not hard enough to break Unsure distance anymore And did think; should we not be clear from the top?

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Street signs, remembered faces, and a boy's smile turn the city into a struggle over who gets seen and understood.

The language is jagged and partly fragmentary, but the pressure is clear: stop signs, illiteracy, confrontation, and racial memory all crowd the same block. A Black boy, a copper coin, and a nearly unremembered white little lady become tests of perception, especially once the poem says it is against art for a face not to be traced. By the end, standing on a creek of cement feels like standing inside unstable witness, trying to find clarity without losing what was actually seen.

Claude

Continuation of the 1969 Pittsburgh poem: a 'Black boy flips back my memory / on the appearance of a copper-coin', a 'white on white little lady' in pink socks crosses 'the cobble brick laid iron rail', and the speaker insists 'It to be against art for a face not to be traced', ending 'STANDING ON A CREEK OF CEMENT / Not hard enough to break'.

The page is a meditation on who in the city earns the status of a face. A stop sign 'continues / its wait for the illiterate', confrontation keeps 'busy / with the bizarre city reunion', and against that noise two figures - the Black boy and the white little lady - become tests of perception. 'It to be against art for a face not to be traced' is the moral the poem stakes: refusing to render a face is an aesthetic and ethical failure. The parenthetical '(nothing said)' is the catch - the reconciliation the speaker describes may be unspoken or unreal, a forgiveness he is 'mixed up / In'. The final image, a 'creek of cement / Not hard enough to break', turns pavement into geology so the speaker can keep historical footing on unstable ground.