Page 161

By Jack Joseph Smith

The Same What is this a way to the end That I could be perfuntery When I put ten cents on the counter Getting young who dosen't put thousands of dollars on the table Glass Bottles in my elbows And lifting ain't shit I remember the first time I had cream and sugar in a porslin coffie cup You got to go to hell to be dignified To find this pearl for your smile I have come from the Ends of this Earth

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The page moves from cheap ritual and bodily labor into a harsher initiation, where dignity requires passing through hell and finding a pearl for someone's smile.

Coffee, ten cents, elbows, lifting, and the table keep the voice grounded in ordinary strain. Then the handwritten turn widens the scale abruptly: hell becomes a condition of dignity, and the speaker claims to have come from the ends of the earth to find a pearl for a smile. That jump from the domestic to the mythic gives the page its force.

Claude

The Same rewrite: bottles in elbows, lifting ain't shit. You got to go to hell to be dignified. Ends with unmaking this pearl for your smile.