Page 19
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The narrator describes a man's ribs strumed by his nervious system, a lead-like ball in his solarplexes and sickness in his throat. The man wants to deficate and come clean.
The narrator uses industrial images for bodily pressure and describes the man's survival while going down. An ambiguous vowel in the throat verb limits that detail, but the distress remains explicit.
A handwritten passage describes bodily strain: ribs 'strumed by the tight ribbons / of his nervious system' and 'a small tight ball like lead' in the 'solarplexes'. It ends 'If he could just deficate, / come clean'.
Physical blockage stands in for a larger inability to release or escape. One verb, read as 'surged', depends on how this hand's closed vowel forms are read.