Page 23
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The page titled `Don` stages a cold Pennsylvania road scene around rum, a lost left eye, a winged bat, the speaker's old man's death, a baton, and a musical-ear question tied to the soul of a shoulder.
The corrected transcript makes the page less like a smooth duplicate and more like a visibly revised draft. The added shoulder line and `this way` question make the ending more bodily, instructional, and spiritual at once, while the handwritten overlays keep the final reading unresolved.
Titled 'Don' and prefaced with a bare 'YEA,' this poem stages a brawl in 'extreamly Pennsylvania cold' with 'rum in the air': 'I was knocking him down a road,' 'Quick as war, I knew I was in a problem,' and Don's accusation 'that eye on the left is gone,' answered by 'I did this all alone.' The fight coincides with grief - 'just about the day / of my old man's death' - and turns the dead father's continuance into a relay where 'he kept the baton,' 'A long baton without a switch,' ending on the riddling 'was it a musical ear / on THE SOUL of A shoulder' and 'Dont stop, that's this way its done?' This reading remains provisional because the page is mixed-band and flagged needs-followup.