Page 19
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A figure moves between the sea, town-square burning, San Francisco, stolen milk, and an anchovie comparison. Crews want his quickness; dance, death, a cowboy, desert oaks, a quoted threat, and denial of the number seven follow.
The sea and the crews recur beside disgrace and danger. The quoted claim to have killed someone sharpens the threat without identifying its speaker or turning it into an established event.
Section 'VII' reworks the sea figure: 'Wild on the sea and burned in town squairs,' 'Immagine hissing in San Francisco,' 'Caught with pants down, stealing kids milk, / dressed to the teeth as an anchovie.' After 'no motor or main sail keeps this poem down turned,' it moves through 'Death like diving,' a handwritten 'Over and always,' 'a quick cowboy,' the quoted 'Thought I killed ya' back there, still don't know ya',' and ends 'Knowing there is no such number as seven.'
The page reuses lines from the two 'VI' drafts but turns self-aware, naming 'this poem' and 'not a line went by.' Its stanzas (four, four, five and two lines) mix comic images with menace, and the closing denial of seven reads like a joke about the section numbering itself. Source spellings 'squairs,' 'Immagine,' and 'anchovie' stay intact.