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Sport 42: 2014

The Monster

page 218

The Monster

Frankenstein’s Monster was
born to peer at his assembled
humanity or lack of

in a world whose water had
turned to ice upon his arrival.

Think: a water-spider pushes from
its silked egg only to find the pulse
of the earth turned cold.

Its whittle-tipped legs slip and
slide on the mirrored surface which

shows the many-limbed creature
its own lurching darkness—

says here you are, horrible collection.

And it wasn’t that he
couldn’t love; he had
four dead babies crammed
into each eye socket—

like any child who longs
to care for a lost chick but
loves it to death instead.

If he had been able to
touch something gently,
he might have kissed the
soft curve of someone’s mouth but

with one hand a virgin’s
couth paw, the other
an executioner’s ironic fist
page 219 and with a cock made from the
thick and greening arm of a
19th-century wrestler

what hope had he of
even a simple embrace?

Yet despite the body, his mind—
a rich nebula

an endless alchemical rotation amongst the silent stars.

He said, I am the Adam of your
labours

this is what you’ve made,

please look at me

and there was a chance, for
just a moment, to peer
into the cool crust of the earth at
our selves

then to get behind that
ashen pack of huskies and
travel with him

beyond.

But no one looked

and he moved away
into the phantom ice
and we cannot find him.