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poem: A weekly poem, read by the author.
"The Man I Killed"
By David ThorburnUpdated Tuesday, March 28, 2006, at 5:15 AM ET
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
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, are Democracy and New Media and Rethinking Media Change.
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