Page 74

By Jack Joseph Smith

I don't feel him when I milk our holstean You rotten basterds When the sun goes down all along the fence I see a thousand things before I turn back to the dog and kids and best of farm house shaeks I have pulled my good jeans up for the day I have put my grandpa's long sleeved white shirt over the top of me perhaps to wild for feeling The in and out naps are down They have faded now, they are musrats in the swerve of clay Now I will unstrap my boots my laces one at a high time I will walk back through His hand made oak door

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The page returns to milking, work clothes, and the walk back into the house, making evening labor feel both lonely and ritualized.

Boots, jeans, the grandfather's shirt, musrats, and the oak door all give the poem a strong physical structure. The speaker's feeling is carried less by abstraction than by the act of dressing, undressing, and moving through the farm at dusk.

Claude

Evening labor performed as ritual. 'I don't feel him when I milk our holstean', the speaker says, then spits 'You rotten basterds' before the sun-down survey: 'a thousand things before I turn back / to the dog and kids and best of farm house / shaeks'. She dresses in his and her grandfather's clothes - 'good jeans', 'grandpa's long sleeved white / shirt' - and watches the naps fade into 'musrats in the swerve of clay'. The unhurried close, unstrapping boots 'one at a high time' and walking 'through / His hand made oak door', keeps absence present in every made object she moves past.