In A Plainview

By Jack Joseph Smith

Crossed through the gut I come back To sell cow shit knowing what you sell you can't spell Tough as a leg iron, spin me The likelyness of respect is low An artist knows Think of the game and consintration Don't cross stab me through talk I stand sure with the keys You have a bumper gone to dent Love is different than trying Watch the half mam I'll take the whole gang absolutely Like making love in a second

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

A compact, abrasive poem where trade, masculinity, insult, and desire all surface in one raw plainspoken confrontation.

Claude

The poem moves through the gut — literally and figuratively — to arrive at a place where selling, spelling, and toughness are all part of the same confrontation. 'Cow shit' named plainly is the poem's refusal to euphemize; in plain view, everything is exactly what it is, and the speaker insists on that rawness as a form of honesty.

The leg iron and the spinning request compress masculinity into pure kineticism — the speaker is bound and in motion simultaneously, which is the condition the poem describes as toughness.