Then: The Ultimatum
Let’s get out of here.
My dad wants you out of the house
–or get a job so we can move out.
Go to the Army so we can have stability…
You’ll be thin and sexy in a uniform–those dress blues.
We’ll be able to travel–fuck Texas.
She pleads with me all the way to the recruiting station on Military Drive.
We park and argue for an hour.
Sailors in crackerjack and Marines in camouflage walk by hearing us
scream about where our relationship was going.
I had fallen in love with Carmen, who worked with me
at the downtown Marriott. I was a pool boy in aqua/khaki
and didn’t have the balls to tell this teary Chicana in the car,
that I wanted to leave her.
I stare at her hard.
I pulled the door handle,
bolted out of the driver’s seat of her father’s ivory Sedan De Ville
and joined the United States Marines Corps.
PCP
Sitting in the sand, catching my breath he says,
You can’t do one fucking pull up?
I jump back up, kipping…one…two
Stop kipping
Holding p-u-l-l-i-n-g three.
None of those count. You gotta be fucking kidding me.
The recruits who pass pridefully scream YES SIR
Panting and confused,
in a sloppy formation,
Drill Instructors scold like fathers,
whispering insults into the ears of the rejected.
I glance at a plane in the sky flying away from here.
The shitbirds are rushed to a room with five payphones on a brown brick wall.
Call your recruiter and tell him you failed.
Call your wife or mother. Tell her, you’ll graduate later.
My Chicano recruiter, thin-lipped, pencil-stached says
Don’t give up. Keep your head up.
My teenage bride says
Just come home. It’s okay.
A Chicano During Wartime
I wanted to go to war
kill sometime in Afghanistan
pick up Corporal
finalize my divorce
you know – out of sight out of mind – war was the prize
lose some pounds
save money
breathe in the hot desert wind
and to know the stink of another country
These boot marines
barely married
trying to sleep with brand-new wives
boot camp S.O. I. get to the fleet
waiting all this time
now shipping out
and I
wanted to go to war
too much American pop
too many movie scenes in my head
Colonel. Kurtz would be sitting on a sand dune waiting for me
I’d tell him, I, too am a poet.
A Chicano poet Marine de Califas
getting paper trailed outta the Marine Corps
pushed around and spit on by Staff Sergeants, Gunny’s
daring me to take a swing
This is what my Tío meant
when he called me to say,
You’re not gonna make it.
Afghanistan was not a war at first.
It was a business proposition.
Contracts, chess, checkers, choices …Cheney.
Everyone wanted in.
The dive bars at home were filled with rednecks,
East coast Blacks, and California Chicanos
–all flirting with the same stripper.
The boot marines at home with new wives
working on pregnancy
hoping pity will let them stay
and I’m
a drunk, hiding dope for friends,
driving while intoxicated,
volunteering to take their place.
send me to the middle east
send me to die
in desert cammo’s
just get me out of America
I needed a break.
Request denied
You’re staying here in Twentynine
Liquored up, unauthorized absences…
A Sgt. looking for me
–– because I slept with his wife.
You’re not gonna make it, Tío said
He was the only consistent
Father-figure I had
when I knew I wouldn’t survive.
Tío went to ‘Nam
Recruiter snatched him up
Like all recruiters in San Anto do,
Round up gente to fight the wars of Euro juniors,
to die for their red, white, and blue,
on stolen indigenous land.
Tío came back to America
a cook for the V.A.
Shit on Shingle,
best meal I ever had.
I wanted to go to war too.
Vincent Cooper is the author of Where the Reckless Ones Come to Die, (Aztlan Libre Press 2014) Zarzamora – Poetry of Survival (Jade Publishing 2019) and Infidelis (Mouthfeel Press, Fall 2023). Cooper’s poems can be found in Huizache 6, Huizache 8, Riversedge Journal, Somos En Escrito, and Dryland Lit. He served as co-editor of Good Cop/Bad Cop Anthology from Flowersong Press (2021) and is a member of the Macondo Writer’s Workshop, which he was selected for in 2015. Cooper is a former United States Marine currently living in the southside of San Antonio, TX.
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