"The Man I Killed"
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was in his early 30s, rosaceous, pocky, the Checker on a Newark pier. He said
I'll be respected
by Jersey turds
like you reporters
and these Hoboken wankers
still wearing bog shit.
Don't you get it?
I said No pictures.
Later, off the wharf
the camera guy
used a telephoto lens
as I pointed, for my byline story,
Wildcat Strikers
Shut Port Newark.
The next week they found him
floating near a buoy
dead in Bayonne harbor
in a mess of bootleg whiskey
and my story in the paper.
David Thorburn is professor of literature and director of the Communications Forum at MIT. His most recent books, co-edited with Henry Jenkins, areDemocracy and New MediaandRethinking Media Change.
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