I don't think I can live
in your secret lair
anymore. The steel blast doors
make me look fat,
and the shark tank
smells like chum buckets
and German cologne
from all the dead
henchmen. You're lucky
they don't start a union.
And the food: salted dolphin
meat and poached sturgeon, lime
juice, coconuts, Siberian gin…
Your harem girls whisper
that your lasers
are just compensation.
And your second
in command slaps me
with his beret
for no reason, and shows me
his missing eye whenever
I have a mouthful of food
and you aren't looking.
Sorry about all the gagging.
Sorry I'm no good
with a jet pack or
a spear gun. Sorry I weep
during interrogations.
Still, we had some laughs:
when your cat threw up
on the roulette wheel
in Monte Carlo, or when
we poured sugar
into the gas tanks
of all those MiGs
outside of Minsk.
But most days I wake
up and think, did
I get my masters
in information sciences
just for this? Updating
the hit-list archives
and alphabetizing
dead spies? I still remember
your ad on Craigslist:
Discreet Multination Corporation
seeks obsequious technocrat
with anarchist temperament
and blind loyalty
to charismatic tyrant. Love
of travel a must. At first,
I even liked it
when you called us
pets. But I don't want
surgically implanted
gills, or X-ray
contact lenses,
or rocket fingers,
even if they are
state of the art. And
I don't want anyone
to fuck with my heart.
Gregory Lawless is the author of I Thought I Was New Here (BlazeVOX). He has published in La Petite Zine, elimae, Best of the Net 2007, Zoland Poetry, Cider Press Review, Drunkenboat, Sonora Review, Artifice, The National Poetry Review, and others. He teaches writing and literature at Suffolk University in Boston. He lives in Waltham, Massachusetts.
