Page 57

By Jack Joseph Smith

tight, as if his skin were attached like undying per- minant flesh to the crow's nest. His chin, his lips, his nose, his sight, his temples were fixed, with the blue beyond. His neck was boned and veined to buldge past the possibility for strangtes, though in his dream there were no other hands in the universe. His ankles were like the set braces of wings, and his feet were curved so to give the excitement of flight when toes, may touch heels. He felt the ships lifts jab the thump out of his heart. Yet with no pulse sensed through his body; he grabbed on to a stone-cold belief that he re- mained alive, and he continued in his sculptured pos- ition of poise. To roll from the ships diversity was not only to fall like rock to the deck, but also to sink to the bottom of the sea; The wind over his skin was as the peeling of hide, and the wind went fericious in ripps through his brain, as if around the socket curvatures of his eyes there was a micro- scopic fraction of open space. In his dream there were no particals in the air, and the wind passed through his mind with the frightening intensity of pure nothing- ness. Slowly he watched his stiffened outstretched fin- gers begin to move. Their intention seemed to be to draw the distance of the center beams of sun to him. The el- evation of the attempt suddenly shot life back through

Original Scan

Page 57

AI Interpretation

GPT

Animal's body becomes a fixed shiplike figure, stretched between wind, sea, and the effort to draw sun back into himself.

Animal seems fixed between life and emblem here. The body is stretched into ship imagery and exposed to pure force, so survival becomes less a matter of ordinary action than of holding form against a universe that could erase him. The last movement, with the fingers trying to draw sun toward him, turns that frozen pose into a fragile attempt at life.

Claude

Animal is nailed into the ship's crow's nest as if his skin were permanent flesh on the mast, skull bones and neck bulging past possibility, the wind going ferocious through his brain. The page treats endurance at sea as near-sculpture — a figurehead held between annihilation and belief.