Excerpted from Battle Dress: Poems by Karen Skolfield
The author of this excerpt, Karen Skolfield, will be a speaker at Amherst College’s LitFest 2020.
Enlist: Origin < German, to court, to woo
Perhaps with a desk between,
some chaste space, the recruiter leaning
forward, warm bodies on the other side.
Of the teenagers present
one will lie about her age,
one will eat bananas to make weight,
one pull herself from small-town quicksand.
Lace the hands behind the head,
look good in a uniform, look nonchalant.