THE WARTIME ISSUE Rose Marie Berger   FOR BOTERO, WHO LOOKED AT WHAT I COULD NOT The bodies are fat corpulent, like the seven-hundred- pound man in Maryland who hasn't stood since 1998 and must lie on his stomach or his weight will crush his windpipe. They hang upside down by a toe or ankle these bodies, faces wrapped in a red silk scarf—                        a present to some commander or other. Almost a bow tied between a framing beam and a metatarsal. Botero blows it out of proportion. He makes it all look larger than life really looks. The blood is too bright, the tow ropes and             snap hooks too ungainly. The billy clubs too phallic with their lead-sheathed tips. I don't know where he gets this stuff,             Botero.             The subjects look stuffed with something— Psalms? Suicide notes? Someone should gag. Someone should vomit all over these paintings. Seriously,             someone should go about grabbing the brush from his hand whenever he starts to paint like this.     Rose Marie Berger is a Catholic peace activist and poet. She is an associate editor and poetry editor of Sojourners magazine. Her poems have appeared in Radix, The Other Side, and Sojourners. She lives in Washington, D.C.   Published in Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2006. To read more by this author: Rose Berger: Museum Issue