Page 90

By Jack Joseph Smith

I could say that (I was talking about killing in herself what was killing her) but I wasn't I was just reading to the downcast Slimming my mind into the drunken faithful Until. I gave her the hard bound collection and walked like a wrinkled Wasp out the door A week Later. I dear one returned Dayturned distant from fresh shower’and shave- but shoulder cover tucked into my Seersucker usual, I went egain into-the dim lit red blues Among the American lower classes - Fiction Hall‘of Hell’ Evading with peripheral’ vision I asked the bartending man through the vest mirrored back of his head | if the woman had since then been there: As -I Carnival like could see’a 180 degree . OP hag men and blue frozen veined women - ghake their ‘heads-in the oval of no- Nowhere -to-be foundsee on the questioned ‘gesture~ of my J inmy--Cagney fingered spread Then the streek of my face-right on right eye teeth Across a mamouth mirrors fingernailed valley of dusts Slammed home my image in profile of a child in the death wing-of a z00" As -I caught-my act in time not to ask about binge and rebirth. taking two. weeks: Hopefully on the lam she was lucky with the second half And do the eyes of the dispossessed answer? "To a tenement hotel, mister -socielworker stare “That beats the Plophouse by a dollars* “Grateful to-sell her inside storye" "On the cover of that Saroyans" (yes you were after) —~To somebody lesser, or somebody greaver= But definitely better for her Then a kid like you

Original Scan

Page 90

AI Interpretation

GPT

A speaker returns to a bar looking for a troubled woman and is forced to face his own helplessness instead of any clean rescue story.

The poem moves through a grim social interior of bartenders, mirrors, "hag men," and "blue frozen veined women," making the search feel crowded but hopeless. Its sharpest turn comes when the speaker catches his own reflected face and stops himself from asking about "binge and rebirth," as if even concern can slip into performance or voyeurism. The closing lines land on a bitter wish that she has gone somewhere "better for her," which is the closest thing to mercy the poem allows.

Claude

Second half of the 'Poverty Program Intrusion' long poem with minor wording differences from page 37.

This version is slightly dryer — 'I was just reading to the downcast / Slimming my mind into the drunken faithful' gives the religious register a colder reading. The final self-verdict stays intact: the speaker names himself as unsuitable for the rescue he attempted. The doubling of the poem across the manuscript is the book's own acknowledgement that this memory wouldn't sit still.