By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A handwritten exchange of slighting self and other, one remembered wind, a shared smell, and crude advice about when to strike someone turn nearness into a rough code of insult, kinship, and delayed violence.
The poem shifts from shared perception into a brutal ethic of timing, where contempt is acceptable only before death. Car, boat, and relative make grievance feel oddly specific, almost comic, yet the aggression is real. Nearness here means living close enough to smell the same air and still nurse the same grudges.
'Near' four: 'Just about — it was close — I suppose we left.' We knew there was one wind before that, knew the same smell. Closes with rough code of conduct — 'If you don't like him / Don't kick him in the ass when he is dead; / just when he is down, that would be alright,' especially if something bad was said about your ear or your boat, or someone related to you.