Across the Street from Two Thousand and One

By Jack Joseph Smith

ACROSS THE STREET FROM THO THOUSAND AND ONE LOWER FIFTH AVENUE PITTSBURGH IN THE YEAR 1969 ’ Today The sky is still an iced grey It seems to wait There is no wind Winter is a whisper Ané color is dropping Throughsse’ Left overrlight - Yesterday A sumny street suddenly turned out of the Monongahela river wind maze Had just eas-quickly- with chemical yellow smoothness _ gone back into a glaze 4s beady eyes burned ‘with sounds ‘nd in a similiar time yet slashed ‘amey on-my-atomiccoblivion of lonely change,’ the telephone booth remains red and gray” And over-the eternity“of a day There still stands :the same = Methodist Home of stone : ALL with only roomfor young women And is it really e residences when young men must not make There“is no space for, that sleek slacked young man without a ten cent piece With his pantlegs brushed by the funnypeper winds or is any city strip simply always meant for the blackness in Pantastic: fantasy on the popping out color from:an only Dick Tracy? A penny for the thoughts from this part of the planet The private price is, in the way the penmy was picked up in front of this silent window glass Tt wes done by the 8 le cap fire plug Someone senseless with on a sure bet will again sit on its head An orange to-red primed ball to the hobo, put an octagon to the factory - mention?
Who, forge fitted its casted usage for a wrench and not on a dear ‘life for the street amusement Coming from an arse wrapped round the sculpture of a phallic bench And while a stop sign contimes its wait for the illiterate 4nd confrontation keeps busy with the bizarre city reunion That Black boy flips back my memory on the appearance of a copper-coin; for an early Santa Claus on sugar wine (Young Mister Shine'em On) Without a single policemen’s pleasure Had also, stopped looked and listened While the vacant eyed pictyre of a white on white little lady . wore pink socks crossing across the cobble brick leid iron rail ___ street car street-__ NO ONE would be able to remember her face -protestings {what came out of the walls of her rooms AS°BEING AGAINST HER Certainly her mother- informed her about being clever- To hold the percentage of her perception sustained to time would keep her life in line - Yet never to be frozen Pinally-into isolation; ‘she seemed the kini who had at least ingcribed’ 4 of the dreem-in her mini Amd the instinct of the yesterday Black boy knew It to be against’art for a face not to be traced” While he then smiled ‘to the true: Which was inside manly witness He himself was mixed up . In this new forgiveness (nothing said) I had seen him turn his shoulder's down To an okey doke turn faces turn not around And I felt confident oe Theat I had traveled with his vatchingees past our lest past A dare doom a visionary tides STANDING ON A CREEK OF CEMENT Not hard enough to break Unsure distance anymore And did thinks _should we not be ¢ tear from the top?
Dangerous in mind? ‘4 was much more dangerous on foots Appearing as just to be judged American man Appearing as just to be judged American woman And no matter ‘how long the city main sidewalk” so thin through its monolith may stretchoos It squared its millions of feet into a falling mirror- I hoped THEE BIG SUPREME JUST for HISTORY : Had not already “called® the abyss

Original Scan

Page 23
Page 24
Page 25

AI Interpretation

GPT

A long urban poem set on Lower Fifth Avenue in Pittsburgh in 1969, cataloguing weather, street characters, racial encounter, gendered observation, and civic decay as the city sidewalk becomes a falling mirror in which national identity is tested and the speaker hopes the 'Big Supreme' has not already called the abyss.

The poem grounds abstraction in physical detail — a red telephone booth, a fire plug, cobblestone rail tracks, pink socks — while steadily building toward the apocalyptic fear that the city's monolith of concrete conceals a spiritual void.

Claude

A located street poem, pinned to '2001 LOWER FIFTH AVENUE / PITTSBURGH IN THE YEAR / 1969,' that plays its Kubrick-echoing address against a stalled industrial winter where 'The sky is still / an iced grey' and 'Winter is a whisper.' From a 'silent window glass' the speaker reads a block of stone Methodist Home, a red-and-gray telephone booth, a fire plug, and a 'sleek slacked young man / without a ten cent piece,' weighing whether 'any city strip' is 'always meant / for the blackness in Pantastic fantasy / on the popping out color from an only Dick Tracy.' A Black boy flipping a 'copper-coin' and a 'white on white little lady' in pink socks cross the same cobbled tracks, and the poem ends in dread that the sidewalk has 'squared its millions of feet / into a falling mirror' and that 'THEE BIG SUPREME' may have 'already called the abyss.'

The poem's method is to treat one ordinary intersection as a screen onto which the whole American future projects, so the 2001 of the address becomes both a Pittsburgh street number and a date the speaker fears. Comic-strip names (Dick Tracy, 'Young Mister Shine'em On,' Santa Claus 'on sugar wine') sit against real social sorting - who may loiter, who may reside, who gets watched - and the recurring figure of the mirror turns the cityscape into a surface that reflects judgment back. The three-page length enacts a walk that cannot be hurried. The transcription is OCR-rough in patches ('color is dropping', 'pictyre'), so individual phrasings are read conservatively, but the through-line from frozen street to feared cosmic verdict is clear.