Parade the Beef

“I declare this meat tasty and fit for human consumption.”
– President of the Mess,
CLR-27, Landing Support Company,
Camp Lejeune, 2009

we charge our wineglasses to toast the dead
marines of the eighteenth century the nineteenth twentieth
twenty-first century their immaculate ghosts seated in
the empty chair at the tiny table draped in
black cloth in a candlelit corner of the ballroom they fork

ghoststeak through their lips it piles
on paisley carpet centuries of steak piling
while I can’t figure out how to light a cigar
the smoking lamp is lit the floor open for fines
Sergeant Steele wears the wrong colored shirt

beneath his midnight blue coat Sergeant Steele
say it ain’t so that’s erroneous drink from the grog
we’re too young to drink the spiked grog but
the staff NCOs don’t stop us Lance Corporal
Butler’s gold PFC chevrons gleam without crossed rifles

say it ain’t so Lance Corporal Stapleton
passes out in the woodchips under the playground
swings before we march back in after
shedding a tear for Lord Admiral Nelson Sergeant
Newman grips my white belt to balance drunk

we drop back in our chairs before
Sergeant Newman falls out slobbering
in my face saying he’ll fight anyone for me he’s
got my back forever he’s always
had my back because he says I’ll always have

his even though that motherfucker put me on
an extra hour of barracks duty he’s right then
his fingers slip off the edge of my shoulder

Saltpeter

Our Kill Hat shreds his vocal cords while
we wait outside the chow hall for dinner,
his sweat-soaked charlies a shade darker
now than when he first suited up in the
DI hut. He screams ​Chain of Command
and we scream into the San Diego sky:
The President of the United States, the
Honorable Mr. Bush! Vice President of
the United States, the Honorable Mr.
Cheney! Secretary of Defense, the
Honorable Mr. Rumsfeld! ​And so on
and so forth. On November 5, the Kill
Hat wakes us up to tell us what
happened the night before: ​Obama is
our president now, you understand me?
We understand because we will be
punished for not understanding a single
thing he says​. The Kill Hat screams to
repeat the chain of command with these
new changes before breakfast. Simple
enough, because nothing has changed.
We are still the rejects of America, as he
reminds us. We shit across from each
other in doorless bathroom stalls and
piss three bodies to a single urinal,
sometimes four. None of us have had an
erection in weeks. Rumor has it they put
something in the eggs.