By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The speaker remembers a skinny group whose image and togetherness made others wary of confronting them.
Their small stature is set against the trouble they promise anyone who would distroy their image. The final claim that others came to watch them hold their ground makes their stance a public performance.
The speaker remembers 'We were cool, super / cool, walking down the / street', skinny at 'five foot six, five foot nine / At the most', but with 'an / image' that no one, however 'big and / tough', would be left to 'distroy'. People came 'from all / over' to 'watch us hold our ground'.
The poem is a boast about group identity, where image and 'togetherness' make up for size. Its run-on handwritten sentence and loose commas keep the swagger of the voice, while the admission of how small they were gives the boast a self-aware edge.