Operator
The front line’s a 45 minute drive
from my place. I grab Starbucks on the way.
I take over mid-air, fly three eight
hour shifts, lose track of my body
in Vegas, my eyes on gray
scale dirt, my eyes the drone’s.
5,000 feet is best. The image so clear
I can tell the brand of your shoes,
or if you have a beard. I can tell
you’ve disturbed the soil in the backyard,
the fields, the road, —the slight
difference of temperature is a darkness.
It lets me trace the wire back to the house,
the bridge, the mine. The tip
of your cigarette a bright white dot.
Your son rides a pale Schwinn.
You took off the training wheels last week;
I was there. I watched him wobble.
When I get the okay, the light of God
comes out of nowhere, pinpoints its target.
I don’t estimate velocity or angle.
I just guide the missile home.
Annette C. Boehm serves as a poetry reader for Memorious, a Journal of New Verse and Fiction. Her book, The Knowledge Weapon (2016), won the Bare Fiction Debut Poetry Collection competition and her chapbook, the five parts of love: confabulating Sappho, is available from Dancing Girl Press. A graduate of the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi, she is originally from Germany.
