Fort Sill Enlisted Men's Club

She’s a slender waif from town.
Dancing in a long distance trance 
on a three by three foot go-go platform
eight feet above the heads of trainee soldiers
downing pitchers of weak Oklahoma beer.

Black bikini bottom -no top,

not that she has much to show.

Her gaze is fixed on some distant shore

or perhaps the daytime show she watched

that afternoon while ironing.

The men below shout and plead,

urge her to show them everything.

She looks up at the smoke-stained ceiling,

giving no sign of what she’s feeling.

The jukebox swells and the men sing along:

“Seems to me, you don’t want to talk about it.

Seems to me, you just turn your pretty head

and walk away.”

Someone brings another pitcher to the table,

tops off the mugs of piss-pale beer. 

The boys raise them towards the dancer,

on the platform high above them and cheer.

Closing time at the club comes early

and the boys stagger along the icy streets

to the barracks, in claques of threes and fours,

bragging about all the girls they’ve laid back home

and smirking about the dancer’s itty bitty tits.

In the morning, they’ll be jogging over

the dead yellow December turf, practicing for battle;

the cannon cockers destined for Vietnam

and the missile men bound for Germany.

The dancer slips into her apartment

and puts her Jackson in the Folger’s can

on top of the wheezing refrigerator.

Goes quietly into the bedroom

and kisses her sleeping daughter’s

meadow-sweet scented hair.