portion of the artwork for Matt Morris's poetry

License to Kill Hope
Matt Morris

          in a white room with a white
cat & a lizard
                        007 wakes up
          not with a buxom blonde bomb-
shell russian double
                        agent but strapped writhing to
          a torture device
also white as is his sports
                        coat the blinding inter-
          rogation light &
bond himself as is fitting
                        seeing how he acts
          as a representative
of colonialism
                        imperialism
          & albeit implicitly
white supremacy
                        so when the hypodermic
          penetrates his cranium
to extract intel
                        vital to security
          it still won’t erase
the centuries of damage
                        whether or not he squirms free
          which of course he does
just in time to torpedo
                        the greenpeace plot &
          head a one-man coup d’état
over a leftist leader
                        who’s making a din
          about nationalizing
this & that though it
                        doesn’t matter what the cause
          on a small island in the
caribbean its
                        white beaches safe once again
          for bikinis &
martinis that are shaken
                        like people & never stirred


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FRiGG: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry | Issue 54 | Fall/Winter 2019