The Mommy Effect

The Pentagon is calling it the "mommy effect" as if it were vertigo
as if it were faces in the white noise and deja vu and not something concrete
like heels on hardwood or belts made of leather

All across the country, they say,
young men and women eager for opportunity but short on options weightless shoulders unburdened aching for straightening hair overgrown overwhelming the rounded corners of youth
Young men and women ready to cut themselves open for apple pie and baseball
Young men and women, they say, are being snatched away by their mothers before they can sign their names in the sand before they can know their sweet and fitting end

Enlistment is down and the FBI's Most Wanted List is full of women in their mid-forties high rising jeans and sequined sweaters
and they're calling it "the mommy effect" as if umbilical cord lassos were crashing through recruiters' windows to greedily reclaim their cargo
These mothers, they say
are bleeding this country of its verility
crushing its warheads between thumb and forefinger and they're calling it "the mommy effect"
As if it was sweet and sunset and cursive whispered in forgotten tongues through clouds of incense and swinging pocket watches and not something concrete
Like "Kyle,
if you join the army I will kill you myself."

They're calling it "the mommy effect" as if
hysterical shrieking banshees wanted to dress us up in sailor suits to suck us back into their wombs
As if these overprotective basket cases could never fully grasp just what is at stake here
But how easily we forget
that mothers have never been pacifists
They've only fought every war ever undertaken before those wars were begin and long after they've ended
They only know their children's stories too well
Understanding that this shit isn't Star Wars
This shit isn't Harry Potter
Our mothers only know that sending their children away for a red and white striped greater good is not a sacrifice
It is a sacrifice.

The ignorant spilling the blood of the innocent to quench the thirst of a fool's god
Virgins thrown to the wolves
And somewhere close,
a child is sitting in a clean air conditioned office talking to a man composed entirely of right angles
Promises hang on the wall ripe for plucking and a shiny silver pen is exactly three heartbeats away from a tangled thicket of jargon, platitudes, and lover's whispers
A man is smiling but
exactly two heartbeats from now
A lean and muscled arm is going to erupt from his throat shattering that smile from the inside as a small woman
hair curlers still in and rolling pin firmly in hand climbs out of his head like a combination of Alien and Athena
Lightning will ricochet between her irises and with a voice four octaves lower than God's
She will say
"You
had better get your ass
back in the house!"
The child will, of course, obey
and the sore-throated recruiter won't know how to explain it, but they're calling it "the mommy effect"