Did You Know the Vatican Is Made of Particle Board
By Lexi Pelle
Something my stepfather said to see if my mother would believe it. She did. She’s been to the Vatican. How blessed the Basilica must be that some tourist’s enthusiastic hand gestures never punctured its pillars, Bernini’s baroque canopy never collapsed by an old Catholic’s fainting awe. A miracle the mosaics still marvelous despite centuries of storms. She was pissed when he laughed, thought he wanted to make her seem stupid, gullible— I only believed you because I love you, she said weeks later when he repeated the story to his bandmates. Who doesn’t want the world to be made of softer material? Who isn’t waiting for truth to transubstantiate the hours spent scrubbing sticky spaghetti from the pot. Say the statue of David is swiss cheese, wouldn’t you want to bite a sculpted thigh until beauty felt a little less unattainable? Stick a finger in the wound of truth like Caravaggio’s Thomas fishing around in Jesus’s flesh, tell me what you feel.
Lexi Pelle was the winner of the 2022 Jack McCarthy Book prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Ninth Letter, One Art, Abandon Journal, and 3Elements Review. Her debut poetry book, Let Go With The Lights On, will be released in May.
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“Who doesn’t want the world to be
made of softer material?” 😍
Holy wow. So good!!