Lampshade and Tablecloth

by Joseph Gastiger

for Bill Tribe

You get hurt just as much for pretend. Meaning, the anchorman staged his own suicide, live on t.v. Meaning, invent the truth. Those gold voices Jeanne D'Arc heard were triggered by bells of the church in her village. Watch as soup convoys stall on the rutted road, studded with mines The sky over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you iron. Because what we cannot imagine, we cannot desire. Because, in the name of whatever about me was strange to her, I light this lamp. We felt rich in those indolent days all because of the weather. All we ever did was make love and walk around the city. Scripture warns, You shall become engaged to a woman, but another man shall lie with her. Since the army gave us only half a uniform--wool blanket, insignia, a dozen cans of food. You will not be beaten again, he promised, on Belgrade news. Meaning, we are seduced by everything that seems--Tudjman in a doorman's cap and coat, Chetniks in their rumpled suits. After, whatever they didn't understand, they destroyed. When they brokered a census to divide the city, one Serb painter claimed to be Hottentot and a Buddhist. His son pencilled Pacific Islander, under that, Bogomil. For their sake, stop pretending every widow here is Moslem. Seven-year-old Nermin Divovic didn't die by accident, hit by a shell they launched half a mile off. Someone singled him out through an infrared scope, then caught his mother in the belly, so she lay there for hours. Let her watch her child bleed to death. Bare trees catch snow light, three lumps of coal a pail--let her watch--where inmates were forced by their torturers to rape each other. Priests intoned, You shall not bring the wages of a dog into the house of the Lord. But even a small stack of wood costs you twenty German marks. You shall build a house, but not live in it, we were warned. Since the end of the world is a place, always, never a time. Since crows are supposed to be as smart as dogs. What good can come out of Nazareth? Nationality: lampshade, Religion: tablecloth, one woman scrawled.