ONE AFTERNOON WHEN BARBIE WANTED TO JOIN THE MILITARY

Denise Duhamel

It was a crazy idea, she admits now,
but camouflage was one costume she still hadn't tried.
Barbie'd gone mod with Go-go boots during Vietnam.
Throughout Panama she was busy playing with a Frisbee
the size of a Coke bottle cap. And while troops
were fighting in the Gulf,
she wore a gown inspired by Ivana Trump.
When Mattel told her, hell no-- she couldn't go,
Barbie borrowed GI Joe's fatigues,
safety pinning his pants' big waist
to better fit her own.
She settled in his olive tank.
But Barbie thought it was boring.
"Why don't you try running over something small?"
coaxed GI Joe, who sat naked behind the leg
of a human's living room chair.
Barbie saw imaginary bunnies
hopping through the shag carpet.
"I can't," she said.
GI Joe suggested she gun down the enemy
who was sneaking up behind her.
Barbie couldn't muster up the rage
for killing, even if it were only play.
Maybe if someone tried to take her parking space
or scratched her red Trans Am.
Maybe if someone had called her a derogatory name.
But what had this soldier from the other side done?
GI Joe, seeing their plan was a mistake,
asked her to return his clothes,
making Barbie promise not to tell anyone.
As she slipped back into her classic baby blue
one piece swimsuit, she realized
this would be her second secret.
She couldn't tell about the time
she posed nude for Hustler.
A young photographer who lived in the house
dipped her legs in a full bottle of Johnson's Baby Oil,
then swabbed some more on her torso.
Barbie lounged on the red satin lining
of the kid's Sunday jacket. He dimmed
the lights and lit a candle
to create a glossy centerfold mood.
"Lick your lips," he kept saying,
forgetting Barbie didn't have a tongue.
She couldn't pout. She couldn't even bite
the maraschino cherry he dangled in front of her mouth.
Luckily there was no film in his sister's camera,
so the boy's pictures never came out.
Luckily GI Joe wasn't in the real Army
or he said he would risk being court-martialed--
he wasn't supposed to lend his uniform
to anyone, especially a girl.
Just then a human hand deposited Ken from the sky.
Somewhere along the way he'd lost his sandals.
"What have you two been up to?" he asked.
Barbie didn't have the kind of eyes that could shift away
so she lost herself in the memory of a joke
made by her favorite comedian Sandra Bernhard
who said she liked her dates to be androgynous
because if she were going to be with a man
she didn't want to have to face that fact.
Barbie was grateful for Ken's plastic flatfeet
and plastic flat crotch. No military
would ever take him, even if there were a draft.
As GI Joe bullied Ken into a headlock,
Barbie told the boys to cut it out. She threatened
that if he kept it up, GI Joe would
never get that honorable discharge.

(from Kinky, Orchises Press, 1997)