Battle Dance

by S.Y. Ball

I prance in black hot pants and white go-go boots, sing 
for mostly conscripted soldiers with blood on their hands 
smeared upside the heads of dependent wives and off-base women. 
Sockin’ soul,
my band deploys 
thrumming guitars, 
horn blasts, 
bass licks, 
rim shots pounding 
like distant guns. 
Sellin’ sex, 
my hips grind out Let’s Get It On, 
my hand grips the mic close to my lips,
I moan through Jungle Fever,
Bounce up and down to the beat, smiling, fearful,
make eye contact with exorcised Marines who want to believe  
I’m begging them 
to pull me off the stage
to hold me down
to gag me thrashing 
to the music. 
Always faithfully
cocked like a sidearm, 
battle dance 
c o m i n g 
c o m i n g
h o m e.

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S.Y. Ball is retired and working to finish her undergraduate degree after fifty years. Her poems have appeared in the Silver Birch Press Series One Good Memory and in the anthology Confluence from FootHills Publishing. She lives with her second husband in upstate New York. The Vietnam War shadowed her teenage years and her first marriage to an Air Force sergeant. They were stationed in Tokyo, Okinawa, and Taiwan during the last years of the war. Her poems “Last Dance”, “Shadow Dance”, and “Battle Dance” are her first attempt to write about her indirect but life-changing experiences of war.