Aaron's Ghost Haunts the New Jerusalem Shopping Mall

by David Y. Todd

What we could have done in Egypt with these nylon tents, vise grips, instant pancakes, plastic mugs, shotguns, garden hoses! I could have used the hoses

to water my friends working the fields, at least

before my brother slew the bigger of those fat bastards driving us. My brother--brave, I guess, distraught certainly, talking to spirits I couldn't see, ones he said nearly blinded him--hed

have gone for these Ray-bans. Or even, instead of relying on me, too often on me to speak what might have gone better coming from him, for an even thousand dollars he might have videotaped

whatever up on that mountain directed him to tablets, shown a cassette to all the people I tried, on his behalf, to sell on this new god. Damned difficult, though,

selling them on this god that chose to make itself more known to us--who were getting kicked, whipped, and pissed on under foreign command--by yet more commandments of its own.