A POEM by GAIL BELLO

My Catharsis as Doctor Frankenstein

I had a rough go of it last spring.

I was forced to take on too many projects I had no heart in

for a stern mistress who had no sympathy for a tenderfoot like me.

I felt down on myself for not having fine hands for delicate details.

From the start I was destined to be left with creations to which I had no happy attachment.

I held what I had sewn and felt nothing.

No pleasure in having crafted.

Nor pride in having picked up a skill.

So as an act of rebellion, I resolved to build an abomination so strange that its imperfections

would be its strength.

I slunk around dank concrete corners and below to the basement quarters where the scrap market

resided.

To start, I procured pliant planting wire and burnished red-checked ribbon.

Then I searched for more morbid wares. The body parts of dolls.

I sifted through the box like a grave robber until I found the hands and head of a moppet that fit

my grand design.

Back in my laboratory, I assembled my creation.

Staples and pins adhering to its asperous body.

A right hand for the demanded precision I could not master.

A left hand for the chronic stress pulsating through my chassis.

And finally, a head, for the panic attacks that affixed me to the floor of my parlor.

Thus my monster was born, a crude but winsome coping mechanism.


Gail Bello is a poet and playwright from Waltham, Massachusetts. She is the co-founder and editor of Crow Name Zine and is looking forward to whatever comes next with a positive and hopeful heart. Find her previous publications here. Follow her on Twitter.

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TWO POEMS by SAM ZIMMERMAN