Page 89

By Jack Joseph Smith

Poverty Program Intrusion It was on Pittsburgh's lower Fifth Avenue where I was preaching the word after work Which at that time was William Saroyan No; it wasn't Fifth Avenue It was Forbes Street. which is one street up South The tavern where I'd gone was down from the tunnel. that leads toward the Southside That's how I know now through that huge round stone It was a bad bar - with too much mirror and no white light Piss over glassy fine dirt Like the coal’one can breathe Finished to-a flush from footwork beneath a strung out brick alley lady Like thin. resin over a floor of ants For high-heeled, low—soled lonely danced jukebox shoes To be devil enticed © down through the faded up gleam of a Pace peering from the below of 1950 squared black tile She was-in nasty garment shape of torn-pale green shades - With a gray spider ‘shawl tied to her loose-pinned bum of hair - Drunk with loss beneath.forgiveness of a kind” the heavens would pile up on a doomsday” While I was young and foolish with fancy notions from my--own emotional problem with perception (no mirror now) We had started at one of the back bench hard booth brown black on black tables (the thick of the fiftiesh type plastic excapes me) But from there along the wall I now remember us seated at the bar once round old cracked red ; leather-able to spin stool high big tops "In the time of your life," I read; "in that time of your life you must kill; then kill; and don't feel bad about it.

Original Scan

Page 89

AI Interpretation

GPT

The poem remembers a filthy Forbes Street bar where literary talk, class grime, and violent instruction blur into one damaged education.

The strongest details are material and local: mirrors without white light, piss, coal-like dust, jukebox shoes, cracked red leather stools, and the woman's torn green garments with a gray spider shawl. Against that setting, the mention of William Saroyan and the quoted command to kill sound less cultured than compromised, as if art and brutality are sharing the same stale air. The recollection is vivid but self-accusing, admitting youthful fancy while refusing to clean up the room.

Claude

Variant of the 'Poverty Program Intrusion' long poem, mostly matching page 36 with a date change (1950 rather than 1930) and small OCR artifacts.

The date shift from 1930 to 1950 is the real difference; it resettles the memory closer to the speaker's likely own youth. Reading both pages side by side is a lesson in how a single remembered bar is being dated and re-dated. The page is the manuscript in the act of adjusting its own timeline.