Page 77

By Jack Joseph Smith

When I walk across the room I feel him behind me When I curle in the dense country song of A big bASS bed don't I know he is gone The tightness in my hips, But when all the sweetness has left, I do I always thought I had a belly Now my nipples are so hard That my middle has disappeared Folkner I accidently got cought in the drapes and I could not find my way out of the lovelyness Just a cut out of Cane I remember him; there is no brother, there is just sin My feet don't spring My but dosen't get a kick Out of a skirt in the wind

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This closing page stays with bodily memory after a man is gone, turning bed, drapes, skin, sin, and a marginal `Folkner` into an afterimage of intimacy.

It reads like the aftermath of the page before it. The speaker keeps testing whether desire has ended, but the body still answers with hips, nipples, lovelyness, and the sense of him behind her. The handwritten insertions intensify the bedroom image while the standalone `Folkner` opens the page toward literary memory.

Claude

The closing page tests whether desire has ended and finds the body still answering. 'When I walk across the room / I feel him behind me', she repeats from page 076, but now curling in the 'big bASS bed' she insists 'I know he is gone'. The flesh contradicts her: 'my nipples are so hard / That my middle has disappeared'. A marginal 'Folkner' opens onto literary memory before she gets 'cought in the / drapes' and cannot 'find my / way out of the lovelyness'. The book ends on absence written into the body itself - 'there is no / brother, there is just sin' - feet that 'don't spring', a skirt in the wind that no longer thrills.