Twelve-Hour Shifts by Jill McDonough

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend September 30, 2015   Twelve-Hour Shifts   Jill McDonough

A drone pilot works a twelve-hour shift, then goes home to real life.  Showers, eats supper, plays video games. Twelve hours later he comes back, high-fives, takes over the drone   from other pilots, who watch Homeland, do dishes, hope they don’t dream in all screens, bad kills, all slo-mo freeze-frame. A drone pilot works a twelve-hour shift, then goes home.   A small room, a pilot’s chair, the mic and headphones crowd his mind, take him somewhere else. Another day another dollar: hover and shift, twelve hours over strangers’       homes.   Stop by the store, its Muzak, pick up the Cheerios, get to the gym if you’re lucky. Get back to your babies, play Barbies, play blocks. Twelve hours later, come back. Take over the       drone.   Smell of burned coffee in the lounge, the shifting kill zone. Last-minute abort mission, and the major who forgets your name. A drone pilot works a twelve-hour shift, then goes home.   It’s done in our names, but we don’t have to know.  Our own lives, shifts, hours, bounced off screens all day. A drone pilot works a twelve-hour shift, then goes home; fresh from twelve hours off, another comes in, takes over our drone.            Copyright © 2015 by Jill McDonough. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “Our secretive drone policy made me think a lot about drone pilots, which led me to read everything I could find from pilots’ perspectives. Real pilots like Brandon Bryant and Matt J. Martin, and fictional ones like those in Omer Fast’s film 5000 Feet is the Best and George Brant’s play Grounded. I was struck by the repetitive, tedious, stressful work they do watching perceived enemies from our killer robot planes, in a whole new way of war. The villanelle, with its looping repetition, felt like a good fit for the experience of weaving in and out of the work piloting UAVs over the desert in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and places we don’t talk about, then driving through the desert in Nevada to go home before your next shift.” —Jill McDonough   Jill McDonough is the author of Where You Live (Salt Publishing, 2012). She teaches at the University of Massachusetts Boston and lives in Boston.   Photo credit: Josephine Packard Poetry by McDonough   Where You Live (Salt Publishing, 2012) "The Long Deployment" by Jehanne Dubrow "Bomb Crater Sky" by Lam Thi My Da "Eighth Air Force" by Randall Jarrell Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038