Deathstalker-Edit 1

[onepapa]

Revised:

Deathstalker (leiurus quinquestriatus) Proper nomenclature, please. Leiurus quinquestriatus xD

Blue Afghan skies watch
ancient Khyber Pass
and Spin Gar's empty hills. Spin Ghar, not Spin Gar. Spin Gar makes me think of a spinning gar pike. I like this stanza in general, though -- sets the scene well, and I can interpret a little something here about a sort of supremacy of the speaker over his marks. 

Nothing moves in the rifle scope.
Acrid wind stirs my ghillie, I always thought ghillie needed suit to be the military thing -- granted, the first thing I thought of here was definitely not the Scots shoe. I find bitter ever the better word to describe a bitter wind, but that's a personal thing.
calescent air shimmering. 

I wait in absolute stillness, While the wind stirs your ghillie....this doesn't work for me.
desert mountain silence
enveloping me. This could maybe work? Just this, without the absolute stillness.

Home's a smoky memory,
blurred by blood, A bit too visceral for my taste -- this screams "War!" a bit too loudly. Maybe tie this sentiment more to the scorpion's nature? It is the subject of the title, after all.
manifold missions and fear.

A scorpion scuttles
across my shooting mat,
nescient of alien presence. "Nescient" ruins it for me. Actually, "acrid" and "calescent" sort of ruined it for me too, but I considered the "acrid" thing just a matter of taste, and "calescent air shimmering" sounds too good to be removed. But at this point, (for me, at least) this feels like a work from the eighteenth century, or a guy whose favorite book is the dictionary -- and I think nescient could be here replaced by something else, like ignorant or something. And without the appropriate article, the line just sounds awkward to me.

Deathstalker stinger raised, "Deathstalker" feels a bit in your face here. Just "stinger raised" would work.
it crouches in the shadows, Crouching in the shadows feels too limited a use of the scorpion image here -- sounds like something I've heard a hundred times before. But that may just be me. Anyway, as a variant, I suggest instead having it wait in the open, describing how its skin sort of blends into the environment -- I think it establishes a somehow clearer kinship between speaker and beast, as the speaker hides not in a cave, but under a ghillie bush/suit/tarp/whatever.
waiting for prey. 

Movement:
Insurgents debouch the defile. Debouch is a transitive verb? And I think a comma would work better here.
Hunters hunting me. 

I breathe deep to slow my heart,
three hundred win mag
cool against my cheek. I love this stanza. I can feel the mag, feel the breaths, feel the tension.

I hold the leader's profile
in the reticle. Damn, I always spell that as reticule. (Not a crit)
A man like me. Feels like this could be fleshed out more -- how is the leader like you, besides being a hunter? I mean, all the characters in the poem are hunters, sure, but the insurgents as described don't seem to have the same, shadowy characters as the speaker or the scorpion. A more physical description here, I think, would work....

The scorpion stirs.
I pray for survival
and forgiveness. I think the prayer here doesn't need to be as described -- it sounds somewhat dull. Best, I think, to just leave this to the imagination (I'm guessing most everyone knows that at this point, the speaker's gonna make his shot) -- "The scorpion stirs. / I pray."

RiverNotch,

Thank you for the thoughtful and in-depth critique. I will make good use of your comments in the edit.

onepapa