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.

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 '5000 Feet is the Best' and George Brant's '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

About 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.


(c) 2015 Jill McDonough. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate