GI Joe by Sean Hanrahan

GI Joe

The shape of war felt so foreign to me. He lacked the vitality
of synthetic hair I could cut. No lopsided bob to glam the girl
up. This brute had bulges that hurt when you tapped him
against your palm. The camo colors were so ugly—nothing
you would want to paint a room. I refused to airdrop him
into a war zone shooting everything in sight. I never dreamt
of combat. I liked adventure stories, but stopped short
of mass destruction. Killing fascinates boys.
Wooly mammoths and other large game must be roaming
the blood-soaked plains of their imaginations. They certainly
were not interested in tip-toeing to London or Paris as my
shoeless doll was. So excited flying through countertop clouds
her feet never touched the ground. Her feet formed for lofty
ambitions. My doll and I were going to Hollywood. I wanted
something more than the playfighting of ordinary boys. I wanted
to be myself, but I was cautioned out of it. I took the scissors
and placed them in a drawer alongside the construction
paper silhouette of a boy I knew I had to become in order to survive.

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Sean Hanrahan (he, him, his) is a poet from Philadelphia. He is the author of the full-length collections Safer Behind Popcorn (2019 Cajun Mutt) and Ghost Signs (2023 Alien Buddha), and the chapbooks Hardened Eyes on the Scan (2018 Moonstone) and Gay Cake (2020 Toho). His work has also been included in several anthologies, including Moonstone Featured Poets, Queer Around the World, and Stonewall’s Legacy, and several journals, including Impossible Archetype, Mobius, One Art, Poetica Review, Serotonin, and Voicemail Poems.