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.