Sign ID Week 9

Gary Gildner's  "First Practice"

After the doctor checked to see
we weren't ruptured,
the man with the short cigar took us
under the grade school,
where we went in case of attack
or storm, and said
he was Clifford Hill, he was
a man who believed dogs
ate dogs, he had once killed
for his country, and if
there were any girls present
for them to leave now.
                        No one
left. OK, he said, he said I take
that to mean you are hungry
men who hate to lose as much
as I do. OK. Then
he made two lines of us
facing each other,
and across the way, he said,
is the man you hate most
in the world,
and if we are to win
that title I want to see how.
But I don't want to see
any marks when you're dressed,
he said. He said, Now.

• weren't ruptured, as if what is coming won't be worse
• "man with cigar" stereotypical image of a "shady" character. Why?
• we enter a safe have, a bunker of sorts, inversion of "safe" space, why? security? 
• name of Clifford Hill, rings as very formal and proper, seems very stereotypical, but in what ways and why?
• "Dog eat dog, obviously savage, by why the cliche?
• killed for his country, assuming WW II, but all elements of glory, honor etc. are stripped away, why?
• savages in training, "men equally hungry"
• "win that title"---what title? men you hate, or the undeclared football/sports title? Obviously the poem remains ambiguous for just this reason, but it still makes me wonder. 
• poem operates on a thinly veiled, unnamed tension---will the boys be practicing football drills, or something equally macabre? no marks when dressed...

Questions I'm considering: 
How does this veiled violence dialog with current cultural politics?
How does this veiled violence dialog with ideas of masculinity and the performance there of?
"in case of attack" who is attacking, and why? does this line root us in Cold War red scare America? Where else could we be?