Nameless

David Barber

Over time the scars become less livid,

and straggling hair conceals the suture line

where cranium was lifted like the top

of a soft-boiled egg. The sexton watches

him heaping up soil, a whiff of decay

masked by the unwholesome damps of the grave.

Cemetery work, where it all began.

Working against the clock of corruption,

Frankenstein had scant time for the tricky

facial nerves. Despair, rage and grief all look

the same; happiness he has yet to try.

The war, he murmured, with a face like stone

when his cicatrix were uncovered once,

guessing such cruelty would be believed.

He no longer strangles the living things,

the dogs, the sheep, the ragged men he meets

along the road – punishment for being

part of God's creation when he is not.

His maker shocked the cold flesh into life

careless of any meaning it might have,

and what was nothing once is nameless still.

David Barber lives in the UK. His poems have sometimes appeared in Star*Line, Apex, Strange Horizons and Asimov’s. (He framed the cheque). Though nominated, he has never won the Rhysling Award.