Good Thing We’re at War
In the roominghouse by the RR tracks the old men drink and the flies buzz and there she is, the softest girl in the world. If you had 20 bucks you could have her. The blinds are falling apart, the wallpaper sags, and that flash of naked leg like a memory from childhood, sunlit backyard and the smell of water,
And according to the radio there’s a storm coming. Electricity above the plains, filling up all that pointless sky, and three grain silos
About a block from the ice plant and the canning factory and the creaking bare-board floors of the hardware store you’d gladly rob,
If you had a gun and a car and she’d come with you, in her sundress and blue suitcase
But instead you’ll enlist in the Navy, like planned, and somewhere off the island of Okinawa, bright and young and shiny with sweat in the tropical sunshine, you’ll drown.
" — can’t remember