Issue #20 (2011) PDF - myweb - Long Island University

Jamey Jones
AVENUE VISION 1
At precisely 11:06 AM, a well-dressed man walks just past the no parking sign, turns to look back
and up at the brownstone building, shields his eyes from the sunlight with one hand, puts a small
camera to his eye with the other one, and snaps a picture. In my notebook I write, ―A well-dressed
man catches a river in his hand as if it were a baseball hurled from the other side of the street by a
young skateboarder behind the dumpster.‖ The man‘s camera in no way resembles a river, but I like
the idea of him, or anyone, catching a river in his hand. I‘d just read about Cayne‘s dad pouring her
ashes into the Mississippi. How he sobbed, standing by himself. The sun shined. A breeze blew. I
wanted to make a poem. And I had also been thinking of my baseball-fanatic-teacher- friend,
Durant. There‘s a cool little skater I see a lot who lives in the apartment building next door, but I‘ve
never seen him throw a baseball. Awkwardly parked by the curb, however, not far from where the
man is standing, camera in hand, there is a rusty, tortured looking, freighter-like, blue dumpster with
white capitol letters on its side that say, ―GUMA.‖ This dumpster is full of white and black framed
windowpanes, some broken, others intact, dropped there by Mexican laborers throughout the
morning as the sunlight began to filter over the rooftops and onto the avenue, as I awakened, made
coffee and grabbed my notebook and pen.
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