Page 217

By Jack Joseph Smith

sealine alive before paradise after the trusted wait from limbo. Flowers opened through the filltered sand; as though giving birth to time. She was one walking with the whiteness as an artistically made shadow that gives color no conflict. Her yellow tight curled hair now wrestled her brow frontward from the wind. There; eyes cyristled to the sun seeing violet through the green leaves of palm, her mind completely escaped her. But for the delicate form of fingers touching a refined liquor glass to suspension, she would have fainted or flown. She was a sexual swan, alive for swoon into eternal sin. Her shoulders were wings laid on a spot of moss by a waterfelled pond. Unfamiliar animals desired her with eyes tamely stolen from mature young boys, and they had a bittersweet strangeness from loosely parted lips. The dream of forgiveness; when the idea of for- giveness is forgotten. The brown's were soft. No black light. No mask of papier-mache'. No temptation to be lost, yet doing so. No damned boom of humanhelltones... But suddenly the ship was moving through the angles of an oil rigged sea. No smooth vision of a launching

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Jaqueline's Hawaiian vision imagines paradise as softness, forgiveness, and sensual release, only to have the actual ship's movement snap that fantasy back into the industrial sea.

The contrast is the whole point. Her dream is lush, weightless, and almost mythic, but the voyage begins through oil rigs, angles, and engineered force, which keeps the collection from surrendering to pure escape.

Claude

Jaqueline's dream blooms into a mythic Hawaii - 'the trusted wait from limbo,' flowers opening 'through the filltered sand; as though giving birth to time' - and she becomes 'a sexual swan, alive for swoon into eternal sin,' shoulders 'wings laid on a spot of moss by a waterfelled pond,' desired by 'Unfamiliar animals.' The vision crests on a paradox of grace - 'The dream of forgiveness; when the idea of forgiveness is forgotten' - with 'No black light. No mask of papier-mache'. No damned boom of humanhelltones.' But the fantasy is held with self-suspicion and then broken outright: 'suddenly the ship was moving through the angles of an oil rigged sea. No smooth vision of a launching.' The page catalogs the wish lushly only to snap it back into the industrial, oil-rigged real.