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.