Draft Papers

I’m told I’m now an adult

And strangely offended that my country

Has not asked me to sign

My life on a dotted line,

They demanded my father

For this bloody promise,

Pulled two grandfathers

Away from brides and into

Potential patriotic martyrdom,

But my citizenship does not extend

Apparently to this fruitless end.

I would mind the request,

I would write my name

In irrevocable, slow, and fearful

Print, and yet I mind

As much the lack of invitation

To the hopeless warrior institution,

Ordained unfit for duty

As if some corporal weakness

Maimed me, unnoticed, leaving

Reminders in the curvature

Of a body unsuited for

The bleak price that

Is asked of only

one half of one nation

With liberty for the fifty

Percent whose lives

Are worth either more

Or less, but never

The same.