By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The speaker whispers to the wind, imagines arms as shelter, and mentions children, a dog, fighting and white boys. Handwritten references to West Virginia and throwing stones accompany a closing wish of good luck with a groundhog.
The speaker moves from an embrace and a roof to judgments about fighting. The claim about eighty percent belongs to the speaker, without evidence for a social statistic. A right-margin block supplies West Virginia and country references, but its uncertain attachment limits how far it can define the scene.
The page moves from 'Slight as strange I whispered to / the wind' and 'His arms around me would not / be wooden' to 'You never saw hell', a right-margin block 'THE WAYS / WEST Virginia / WHITES in / THE COUNTRY', 'Now there is Awful without / doining wrong', and 'Eighty percent white boys / Are interested in kicking ass' before 'Good luck with a groundhog'.
Tenderness and threat sit side by side, and the margin block names a place without a fixed point of attachment. The 'Eighty percent' line is the speaker's own exaggerated claim, not a statistic, and the closing groundhog undercuts the tension with a joke.