Page 76

By Jack Joseph Smith

Alot older than passed down gloves You know that no one has ever had a pair of gloves on in the mine I wanted to get a ease from a ship and put it up but I didn't I just stuffed it as high as you get up in the choossit And they could search my silk forever for the shells We are tight belly and long legs high forhead the two of us wooden stock of course The perfect country song A big brass bed When I walk across the room Anywhere the way a women walks he is behind me

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The poem turns bed, body, mine, and hidden shells into a country-song image of intimacy under pressure.

Gloves, mine work, silk, shells, forehead, stock, and the big brass bed all make the speaker's relationship feel built from objects rather than declarations. That indirectness gives the page its tension.

Claude

Intimacy assembled from hidden objects and mine-country fact. 'Alot older than passed down gloves', the speaker notes 'no one has ever had / a pair of gloves on in the mine', then describes smuggling and concealment - stuffing something 'as high as you get / up in the choossit' so they 'could search my silk forever / for the shells'. The couple is rendered as matched hardware: 'tight belly and long legs / high forhead', 'the two of us wooden stock of course', folding lover into rifle. It resolves into pure country-song image - 'A big brass bed' - with him always 'behind me' as she crosses the room.