Page 241

By Jack Joseph Smith

06 Hart Street was still quaint for chats upon the stoops; or over coffie black to creamed at Olivia's restaurant down the way on into iven Joe:had gone: on to the folka about the public interest. "You may ’ think her dingy, but she is a darling damsel daring dreams due -no damn doubt to the public: nightmare; and all saints were shuned’ or slandered, stripped to be stilled of spirit or shouted insane-on the- measure of sick wit before savage *violence:-= until, until my dear friends, with which of course you take : no part = the money was sure-on the Bishop's bet of 7 ' tributes" Igbo the day her court had.counted’ as-four she had said? "The waves before us take me beyond this beach to an ocean blue-deeper than blackness," While in . : clamor her soul'had stretched the:bosom of her idea out onto the porTHy mention that whispers maybe sil= ‘ ence-upon the world space of seas She-with no swell= ing seen felt the-image-vision playing with-and=in a belly: bottom of the: Héaven formed’ Mother Earth doing it again down heres On the fifth day the motions of Mart Street had been filled with sounds built up from a murmur into an over=- ture of question. These:sounds had become one to Jiven Joe as-a chorus while he had passed through the motions’ Me pewl= and the sounds had passed through him, d risen

Original Scan

Page 241

AI Interpretation

GPT

Hart Street begins to narrate Maria's vigil as a local myth, and Jiven Joe folds her ordeal into his own language of saints, public nightmare, and theatrical witness.

The page shows how a private act becomes neighborhood legend. Joe's speech does not settle whether Maria is holy or mad; it thrives on the unstable border between the two.


Claude

Hart Street narrates Maria's vigil as a local myth, and Jiven Joe folds her ordeal into his ongoing mythology. The page is the neighborhood absorbing a saint.