Page 88

By Jack Joseph Smith

Never knowing evil. My first floor house had all twelve-foot ceiling. The brass bed was a hell of a lot older than fancy And when I five-times in five-months stared up at him straight. his ghost head was bowed I must be honest LAST MONTH ON It was the next night I wound upstairs to his biding Tatered and old the house airs: I knew in years I would work up to my sharecropper studio. Huge-daylight always had huge possibilities for the room This new moon night had me with wine after midnight I let the door ruffel it's own way still And I went to the center where a bulb used to hang AND THE PALEST GREEN MOSS HUNG OUTSIDE THE GLASS FOR 100 FEET WHERE MY AUTUMN GARDEN LEAVES GREEN WENT YELLOW The windows were big and dreary, but the planks were just big I took my elbow from knuckle-outside of my temple to measure the bat as he came- For one-half hour the gallon red wine and figure eights had me on fire with the dangerous dream danced But then I got more thirsty for water When he changed to spin at my window over the river garden and I slipped like a presider saint out the close of a trying devail door Honest enough not to be there with no escape. When I returned in the next early morn WINGS AND - HE WAS GONE that dawn

Original Scan

Page 88

AI Interpretation

GPT

A typed-and-annotated prose poem recalls a haunted room, wine, moss outside the glass, autumn garden color, a bat at the window, danger, thirst, escape, and a dawn return after the figure has gone.

The page turns a domestic room into a charged threshold between ghost story, intoxication, and self-preservation. The handwritten additions sharpen the time frame, exterior garden image, and the disappearance at dawn.

Claude

This page describes a night encounter in an old room, where wine, a bat, a ghostly presence, and escape culminate in absence at dawn.

The piece blends supernatural unease with physical detail: bed, stairs, window, elbow, thirst. Its handwritten edits make the draft feel active and unsettled, as if the event is still being re-seen.