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Monday, February 03, 2014

DRONE PILOTS DO IT REMOTELY

by Howie Good


Predator Drone Pilot. Image by Wikimedia Commons. Proximate source: Australian Popular Science.


By the bomb’s
early light,
faces appeared
crippled
and blind,

and where
the centuries
crisscrossed,
there were
wilted flowers
to braid in wild
witchy hair.

“A disaster,”
I repeated,
but louder
this time,

a strange way
to find out
that the voice
I needed
was the one
I already had.

My children
waited for me
to say more.
“Go to sleep,”
I ordered,

never even
thinking
to explain

that if you
don’t sleep,
you can’t
very well dream.


Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the 2013 chapbooks Echo's Bones and Danger Falling Debris, both from Red Bird Chapbooks. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.