Rusted helmets, dog tags in the garden, they live in World War 11's abandoned purlieus under the wave of jungled mountain where as it crests a Black Widow fighter shines in the dark clearing of its crash. Jungle like green heads of broccoli - the husbands helicopter over it to the waiting front line of faith where headmen squat on naked haunches wearing necklaces of safety pins, while wives drink tea, embroider, knit, or nurse a twelve-year-old through quinine visions in late afternoon heat tremors and screams of white cockatoos, until dinner reassures with flavors from freezers stacked with hamburger and cupboards stocked with peanut butter and Spam. At a bonfire of the fetishes, husbands stir the ashes of their godly war glinting with the cowrie eyes of charred idols, spoils of faith. Led by wives, a Pentecostal flock at prayers purls like cramped chickens. Retreating from ancestral forests to the neutral zone of Christ, this unprotected species marches narrow halls of psalms, Stone Age refugees redeemed from fire of government helicopter gunships to learn how to iron their new white shirts. |