Q. To study whether the torture was working
would violate ethics and international laws.
A. No, it’s fine, the tortured suspect says.

Q. Aphrodite rescuing Ares, in the Iliad, from cruel Athena,
who hit him with a rock.
A. Isn’t this always what we ask of beauty?

Q. He had studied the medical and psychological literature.
A. On how Chinese interrogators extracted false
confessions.

Q. (false: (false: (false: (false: (false:
A. Millions of official secrets created every day,
Q. In another story, Odysseus waxed his ears

alone, and the crew went crazy.
A. Even the freedom
of information act request (censored:

Q. Is the suspicion of beauty also its pursuit?
A. In the bumbling spy comedy, the prisoner asks
if he will ever be let go and the interrogator laughs.

*

Joshua Gottlieb-Miller is the winner of the 2012 Indiana Review Poetry Prize, and his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Third Coast, Pebble Lake Review, Cell Poems, Blackbird, Linebreak, and elsewhere.