By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The page begins with cards, a needle, and crossed fingers, then turns an absurd act of eating something first into a poem about reading between lines and imagining what went on.
The voice is playful and self-aware here, but the added opening gives the joke a sharper ritual edge: cards turn over, a needle appears, and fingers cross before anything is eaten. Something is literally taken from the pot and eaten first, then immediately recast as a poem because readers know how to search between lines and invent context. The closing correction about not getting higher keeps the page suspended between confession, joke, and lecture; the fragmentary right-margin note is omitted.
A small brag about eating it first, turning the drug ritual into a poetry ritual. The lecture-without-getting-high closing is self-aware and slightly superior, which is the point: the speaker has stepped outside the circle and is narrating it.