Page 77
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The speaker feels him behind while walking, then curls into a handwritten image of a perfect country song and brass bed while knowing he is gone. Hips, nipples, a vanished middle, drapes, and a loss of bodily response accompany memories of him.
The handwritten revisions connect this closing page to the preceding country-song and brass-bed lines. The speaker contrasts a felt presence with his absence and changing bodily sensations. Folkner shares the accidently row's baseline and now follows it inline, but its intended attachment and case remain uncertain. Cane remains the typed spelling; these words do not establish a quotation or biographical claim.
The poem says 'When I walk across the room / I feel him behind me', adds the handwritten 'iN thE pErfEct couNtry soNg / of A big brAss bEd', 'don't' and 'But whEN all the sweetness has left, I do', and continues 'I accidently got cought in the Folkner / drapes' to 'I remember him; there is no / brother, there is just sin'.
The page revises page 076 by hand, and the closing lines turn memory into a statement about sin. The handwritten 'Folkner' shares the accidently row's baseline, so its attachment and case remain uncertain.