The Other Side

By Jack Joseph Smith

To meet you in hell A place where things did not go well I saw you over there I saw you frightened of vision Nothing is called for Incissions, the slightness around things Not meaning from across the hall Nothing dislocated or depossed Just your wond, that I have to put my hands to Now that would be a problem hard to twist your back to

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This poem stages encounter, injury, and touch inside a hellish emotional space where wound matters more than explanation.

The language is stripped down but physically charged. Hall, incision, wound, hands, and back all keep the poem close to the body, while `The Other Side` suggests that the real crossing here is not spiritual abstraction but contact with damage.

Claude

Hell as a place you meet somebody rather than a punishment. The page refuses the usual apparatus — no flames, no judgment — and gives instead 'incissions,' 'slightness,' a hallway, 'your wond, / that I have to put my hands to.' Jack's misspelling of 'wound' as 'wond' may be accident or may be intention; either way it is more physical than the clean word. The closing 'hard to twist your back to' leaves the speaker stuck facing what he was supposed to be turning from. The other side of the title is not heaven; it is the person already there.