Zero-Dark-Thirty

Shirley Stephenson

We descend by ladder.
The temperature matches our skin
and handguns. Stars deliquesce
the balmy murk.

A kid in cargo pants stops
to light a cigarette. Others stumble
along the tarmac.

Is dying easy?

Outside a fluorescent hangar, a woman
sells fish skewers. She says, “You’re 300 miles off
the coast with an empty tank.”

A meticulous display of gimcrack sparkles
on folding tables.

Hours ago, I lifted a man
with no skin on his back, ulcerated
through to bone. No one
will roll him over.

Minutes spliced—propeller blade,
third lid of fatigue.

When I was nine my body flew
from fever. I awoke to arms
carrying me to an altar
and thought disease meant being held
in all the lies I’d ever told.

A soldier dozes,
weight of a lover between his thighs,
husk of promise cupped

in an open hand.
This is the blind spot,
our surrender to mathematics

and all the beaked saints
with their numb feet
poised to break our fall.

Shirley Stephenson is an ER nurse in Chicago, Illinois, and is studying to be a nurse-practitioner. She used to work in global health and spent some years living outside the U.S. Her poems have appeared in various magazines, most recently Diagram and the Southern Review.

“Zero-Dark-Thirty” appears in our Autumn 2009 issue.