Spinning

A hug, a closed door
and you wave to your parents
from the backseat of the recruiter’s silver Escort,
Black and white government plates,
while your mother,
Who will be sad you left for the next thirty years,
Feigns a smile as the car rolls down the driveway,
 
Heads towards 7th Avenue,
Past the bakery and dime store
And towering cement silos,
Past the girl’s house you rode by
For a whole summer, hoping for her attention,
Past corn fields and soybean fields
And lakes and rivers you fished
With your grandfather on early summer mornings,
Riding west to the Twin Cities on I-94,
To MEPS in Minneapolis
Where the marine will ask if you’re gay,
Where the doctor will press against your testicles
As you pose military silence
Alongside other future sailors and soldiers,
Still in civilian shoes and shirts,
Still anticipating the barber’s chair
Where the military will attempt to wipe away
The last remnants of personal identity.
 
You haven’t heard the man from the Bronx
Screaming from the top bunk
In the middle of a barrack’s night,
Or the bleeding soldier stumbling
Into McDonald’s drunk, or the call to a war
That you never fully understood other than
This is your duty, this is what you trained for –
A war your future wife would march against.
 
The reveille bugle has not sounded
You out of your childhood clothes:
 
You’re still in that back seat,
I-94 humming below you,
The radio station playing light pop,
The recruiter talking to another recruit,
As the Escort spins scenes
You’d seen a thousand times
But will never seem the same again.