By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The speaker places coal and football beside cars, a two-headed calf and Indigenous wives weaving the endings of their magic.
The speaker calls the owners' power mindless and turns from their spectacle to the last warriors and their wives. The closing reference to the American Western movie places those figures beside a screen tradition, without explaining their relation.
A handwritten poem in three stanzas and a closing couplet moves from 'Shinning black coal, and / Friday night touchdowns' to 'Flashy Buicks and Olsmobiles' on farm roads, where 'the spectrum of a two / headed calf' leaves the owners' eyes 'strange in celebration of their / mindless power'. It then turns to 'The last of the Indian warrior's / Their wives weaving out the endings / of their magic' and ends 'Traditors to the American / Western movie,'.
The poem sets small-town American display, coal, football, flashy cars and a roadside freak, against an image of Native women weaving the last of their magic. The word 'Traditors' may play on tradition and traitor, pointing the ending at the Western film genre. The short, unpunctuated lines give it the quick feel of a notebook draft.