About Week Six of basic training,
Sarge warned us some yellow-bellied stockade-
bait would transfer in, a sorry dude
we'd better shun. A frail man, straining
to see through thick glasses, he'd been denied
Objector status and drafted out of his thesis
in French Lit. He'd just done thirty days
for AWOL for signing with the unit beside
ours and pulling KP till the brass
sorted duty rosters and tracked him down.
I last saw him collapsed from our morning run,
fallen, wheezing and puking, in the grass
with sergeants clustered, as our column passed,
to curse and boot him -- belly, face and groin.
R. S. Carlson