Page 9
By Jack Joseph Smith
What if I hadn't said
that knife fighting
was out out of the questiom
Or yes my love
before I'm twenty one
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The speaker imagines not having ruled out knife fighting and places a direct address to a lover before turning twenty-one.
The speaker considers the consequence of a refusal and then turns toward an intimate address. Violence and youth share this short reflection, but the fragment leaves their relationship unresolved and does not establish an event in the author's life.
The speaker asks 'What if I hadn't said / that knife fighting / was out out of the questiom / Or yes my love / before I'm twenty one'.
The poem turns on a remembered choice between violence and love, framed as an unanswered what-if. The typed 'questiom' and the doubled 'out out' are kept as written.