Frankenstein

No one sits beside the prof here in the dark,

but behind me they whisper and giggle and bark

their disdain for what? the poetry, the black

and white, the naivete of the monster, its lack

of common sense, which they possess in spades?

Aren't we, too, pieced together from open graves?

To the monster the child was like a lower,

therefore she was a flower, and since a flower

can float, so should the child. But she can't, she dies.

To the students, some thirty years younger than I,

the monster is merely dumb, the girl a splash,

like a punchline, a machine to produce laughs.

The prof packs his notes, useless, dismisses the kids.

A few linger with questions I can't rid

them of, ever-children drawn to the abyss.

A bus passes; I wave it on. What is

the night to do when its terrors shed their beauty?

I stumble home, past villagers hungry for duty.

Tom Whalen

Copyright Literature/Film Quarterly 2000
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