Page 74

By Jack Joseph Smith

Who, forge fitted its casted usage Por a wrench nd not on a dear life for the street emusement Coming from an arse wrapped round the sculpture of ea phallic bench dnd while a stop sign contimes its wait for the illiterate And corProntation 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 ea single policemen's pleasure Had also, stopped looked and listened While the vacant eyed pictyre of a white on white little lady | wore pink socks crossing across the cobble brick leid iron rail —_Street' car street. NO ONE would be able to remember- her face -protestings eeewhat came out of the walls of her roomsss ASBEING 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’ 4 of the dreamin her mind And the instinct of the yesterday Black boy Imew 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 — Thet I had traveled with his vatchingees past our last past A dare doom a visionary 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

Page 74

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: Black boy at a street-corner becomes witness, the white girl crosses a streetcar track, the speaker admits traveling with the boy's watching.

The poem is a meditation on who in the city is allowed to be seen as a face. 'Nothing said' in parentheses is the key — the reconciliation the speaker describes is unspoken and may not have happened. The final image — a concrete creek 'Not hard enough to break' — converts the city pavement into geology, which is how the speaker keeps his historical bearings.