—After Rom Spaceknight #1, December 1979
It’s classic meet-cute. He’s a seven-foot cyborg on

a quest to rid the galaxy of an ancient evil.

She’s a small-town girl on her way home from work.
She swerves to miss him. He wrenches her back onto

the freeway. Stands there statuesque in

silver wetsuit and thigh boots, engine-block chest and  
boxy head, blank apart from two red headlamp eyes.

He shines a light on her and flies away.

Later that night, in front of the Bijou, The Creature

from Space on the marquee, he turns two guys to piles

of ash like chalk outlines. Everyone runs

but her. He flies her to the outskirts of town, tells her 
about the war in space. How he signed up for the cyborg

army. How her high-school buddies are

shapeshifting sleeper agents hiding in plain sight.
The National Guard cuts in. He chucks around some tanks

and jeeps. Ignores the bouncing bullets and

the flicking of flames against his armour. Turns the Sherrif 
and the local barber to ash, then flies away again, leaving

the survivors to tell the tale of his arrival. It’s

Roger Corman meets Ernst Lubitsch. It’s a hell of a first date. 
This poem was first published in Strange Horizons on 31 January 2022.