By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Public life feels dangerous because bodies are judged before they are known.
The fragment reduces the city to a thin main sidewalk and a falling mirror made from millions of feet, so ordinary walking becomes exposure. American man and American woman sound less like identities than verdicts already waiting to be imposed. The final appeal to the Big Supreme fears that history itself may already have opened onto the abyss.
An untitled page opening 'Dangerous in mind? / It was much more dangerous on foot:', where people appear 'just to be judged American man' and 'American woman', the 'city main sidewalk' squares 'its millions of feet / into a falling mirror', and the speaker says 'I hoped THEE BIG SUPREME / JUST for HISTORY' 'Had not already "called" the abyss'.
The poem shifts danger from ideas to bodies moving through public space, where every walker is sorted and judged by an American category. The sidewalk becomes a vast mirror that reflects and multiplies the crowd while falling, an image of collective self-regard sliding toward collapse. The shouted capitals of the ending turn a prayer to a supreme power into an anxious hope that history has not already been handed over to the abyss.