Page 19

By Jack Joseph Smith

And that is about it My friends go to school Each tri mester We try and stay atop the one thousand that don't get hit Our fingers are on the count Like a pair of women new shoes Tearing the rivers and the tides away Spliting our own deserts and bringing our mountains All of us Even if we are one Who has never been to the other inside this last Tumbler the count and valley's away

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The typed poem sounds like a collective school or social poem, while the handwritten additions keep dragging it toward a rougher and more local voice.

What matters here is the collision between the orderly typed lines and the later insertions. Even where the page stays fragmentary, the direction is clear: a public, almost institutional voice keeps getting interrupted by speech that is more personal, more abrasive, and harder to smooth out. Because several handwritten additions remain unresolved, this interpretation should be treated as provisional.

Claude

The tri-mester-school friends, the one-thousand-who-don't-get-hit, `new pair of women / new shoes`, rivers and tides torn away. Ends inside `this last / Tumbler / the count / and valley's away` — small-town youth-and-attrition accounting.