Page 89

By Jack Joseph Smith

Not a great deal mind you, but I had touched some evil, called Honolulu and Hollywood Now the Western Oregon Monroe House had twelve foot high Bast'e Sheephearder ceilings The hundred year old brick fireplace crumbled, with my coming, gradual as sand, deep back against the flame The brass iron bed had no fancy about its ageless function of comfort in letting dying flesh drift well under the keepers Will's I must say that it is true That it was always on red wine That I saw his shoulders leaning At the long shadow line of the chandelier Each time he had his head bowed from the wall planks, as he stood streight up like an eternity anatomy of reeds with an iron brain My chest was never far from my knees Till his fifth appearance Had me wind up the stave staircase With the spirit of his bidding It was as cold as a three-o'clock ghost, when the ghost is the dream you don't sleep There were no paintings on the way to awake And I could only peer for an Eastern new Moon as I closed the last top flight door But then with no lock the door let its latch and ruffled a bit to second shut at my back It seemed to feel sure that I would be able to remember: I went to the cord at the center; where just the socket hung But through that East window There was light on the palest green moss Strung still One hundred feet outside the glass where my root Autum garden bent low like little yellow hedges down to the unpruned plum trees before the Long Tom River

Original Scan

Page 89

AI Interpretation

GPT

The Monroe House appears as a haunted red-wine interior with high ceilings, a crumbling fireplace, brass iron bed, chandelier shadows, a stave staircase, and an east window over the Long Tom.

The page makes the house itself supernatural. Its ghostly figure leads the speaker upstairs, but the final image returns the fear to moss, the autumn garden, plum trees, and the river outside the glass.

Claude

The bat's figure-eight flight never touches the speaker's temple; he trusts it won't, and when the ghost multiplies to many with their eyes closed swirling around him, he is let to stop like a tired child's top before backing out the latch frightened of the windows.

'I was let to stop like the top of a tired child' is the collection's most unexpectedly tender line. The bat dance is not attack but choreography, and the speaker's trust in not being touched is a strange form of faith. The next morning the bat is gone and the glass hangs theatrically from near ceiling to sill with holes left for the blind sight to escape.