Click here to listen to David Thorburn read this poem.
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
dead in Bayonne harbor
in a mess of bootleg whiskey
and my story in the paper.
