Page 35

By Jack Joseph Smith

Work Hope, leaving home, waiting whatever you have become- Joy; whatever you have become; leaves a town. With marriage all things return. All things are returned and this aloneness is now; Like a child out of church with a dime- Now it is some dollars that say no Christ. When you went to be an adventurer- You didn't know that power turned When it laid off your love for say three bucks: You started that evil of wonder About why take my own to my kid: I'll bet he's cute in the South Seas: Let's forget it dear We got a good con going here in Cleveland

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Work becomes a story of leaving home, losing love to money, and talking oneself into a hustle that covers loneliness rather than curing it.

Marriage, adventure, fatherhood, religion, and cash all get pulled into the same weary argument about what a life turns into. The child out of church with a dime grows into a harder economy where some dollars say no Christ, and affection gets measured against layoffs and three bucks. Cleveland arrives not as a destination of dignity but as the place where the speaker and a companion keep a con going to survive.

Claude

'Work': the arc from adventurer to laid-off-father, with love downgraded into 'three bucks' and a con going in Cleveland.

The poem dramatizes labor not as production but as the machinery that reassigns what home means. The repeated 'whatever you have become' is both consolation and accusation, depending on how you hear it. Cleveland as the final rhyme-word is ironic anchoring — the dream lands somewhere specifically unglamorous.