Four hours a night
and we slept with our rifles,
strap twined around skinny forearms,
brass and ammo locked away
and catch on safety.
Drill Sergeant Robinson warned
that if he snuck
into our shelter halves
and nabbed a rifle,
why, we’d be pushing
Fort Dix off the map.
We laughed, our voices too high,
our camouflage paint cracking
into frightened, toothy grins.
He held a rifle over his head:
“For the next eight weeks,
this is your boyfriend!”
I thought, “girlfriend.”
No one in my platoon
breathed a word the nights
Alexis crept into my bunk.
After full-pack road marches I’d wake
screaming from a charley horse,
animal sounds ragged
and out of touch with the night.
They were glad I had someone
to smooth my cramped muscles
and shut me up. And everyone
was so far from home.
Latest rumor was that
a girl in the next platoon
was getting discharged
for being queer
and I asked my ranger buddy
to point her out
but she couldn’t, and me dying
to know what one looked like.
