Issue 20: Jeffrey Thomson

Fake News

When Thucydides was young,  he was sickly and small and could not compete with some of the older boys and so disgraced his small town of olive trees and hot rocks and goats and that sunlight like rage, and in their anger and his shame at their share in it, the boys of the town held him down and pissed across his chest. Despite winning the boxing laurels and rising to the status of general years later, it seemed like nothing mattered except the feeling of heat on his chest like a hot sting. This is not true, or maybe it is true except his name was really Theo Clyde and the Greek village was a tarpaper town in the Mississippi Delta and he was black and the boys were white and the piss was yellow and he would recall that hot rain of shame burning small holes in his chest as he beat a man nearly to death in the boxing ring later in his life. Or maybe none of this is true and the real story here is the power of the writer to make you think of shame because that boy was him. Or because the other boys were him. Or both. And how he now asks you to carry them all with you—that boy with the small knives of urine nicking his chest open and the ones standing above him with their dicks out for all the world to see like small tyrants.

Short Story for the FBI

All eyes are upon you now

and everyone is listening—can’t

you hear that clicking on the line?

That’s the lonely detective

with his bag of chips. You know him

from a thousand film clips. He’s waiting

for you to say something interesting,

waiting for you to say bomb

and not mean the club you hit

the night before where the lights

spun and zipped like carbonation

and the music was a second heart

in your chest and the girl with glitter

and smoked eyes like a Russian spy

touched your lips with her wrist

and misted away into the crowd

But when you say it that way

you’ve dated yourself and the story’s

not so fresh anymore, and

the detective has finished his chips

and he feels the lack of bourbon

precisely, and he desperately wants you

to hang up or incriminate yourself.

So, tovarisch, say something for him,

bring him into the lonely acre of your life,

tell him a story, how once long ago you set

that garage on fire with an aerosol can

and a bic, how the sudden union of

the flame and the curtains made you weep

until the fire brigade arrived, too late,

and—as the effervescence of their lights

flung itself into the faces of the dark

summer maples—stood around speculating.