Joseph Gastiger
Italo Balbo
How you'd rumble through newsreels like God
in a jeep, maestro–joking with beauty queens,
rattling bottles of castor oil so we'd
behave. We'd see you soaring over
the stadium, suck in our bellies, stand and
salute because we'd crowned you emperor
of the air. Never mind if you suffocated
Ethiopians, you were the daredevil
every twelve-year-old boy wanted to be.
But what choice did we have after you told
half your black-shirted friends, If we lose there
won't be enough lampposts to hang us all.
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.