From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
Here is the shift in agency in the poem.  The “I” in the poem becomes a “me” when “they washed [him] out of the turret with a hose.” 
 “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” also addresses the senseless death of young people who haven’t had a chance to live yet.  The poem is so short because the gunner’s life was so short.  The speaker is given no name, which creates a sense that he didn’t even live long enough to have a sense of identity beyond “the Ball Turret Gunner.” He “fell into the State” in the first line – the actions depicted in the middle lines of this poem effectively constitute everything he ever did. 
 Throughout the poem Jarrell uses brevity to powerful effect. 
 “When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose” is meiosis.
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner