Joseph Gastiger
Verdigris
When I can't help feeling melancholy,
I go to see the little bronze people
locked up in cases in a practically
empty museum. Flute players, courtesans,
soldiers and soothsayers–we could have
all danced together at harvest, long before
Christ. I bring my bad luck there, very near
closing time, nodding to each small worn-out
god. I think they whisper back, as the dead
do sometimes–warn of what's coming, give me
advice. But in Etruscan, which, lovely as
it may be, nobody alive understands.
Bio
Joseph Gastiger studied at Stony Brook, Iowa, and Colorado State landing at NIU, where he taught classes in freshman comp and coordinated the University Honors Program. After seventeen years, when he just couldn't grade one more paper, he went back to school, at the Chicago Theological Seminary, and has been a pastor of the First Congregational United Church of Christ DeKalb since 2001. Two books of his prosepoemss-Loose Talk and If You So Desire--have been -brought out by Lost Horse Press in Sandpoint, Idaho.