Page 57
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"No" rejects the idea that the speaker's street-sweeping posture is service to someone else, then expands him into a giant nocturnal presence shaped by ash, cameras, graveyard feeling, and dream.
Broom, dust pan, bending, cops, and cameras keep the page on a real street, but the poem resists any simple reading of submission. The handwritten NOT gives the refusal extra force. The speaker's self-image expands into something animal and oversized, while the graveyard line and the farmer addition push the page toward a night-world where dream and waking power become indistinguishable.
No: street sweeping on the vacant street, giant leopard blowing ash, the cops discussing camera surveillance. Night and dream were the same by upbringing.