The Crime of Frankenstein
Carl E. Reed
Sentience is a sentence served in hell.
—Anonymous
A
monster I was born, comprised
of parts
exhumed
from fresh-dug graves by grim-faced men
securing
for the doctor &
his arts
dark
rotted bone & flesh
that twitched again.
How
tell you of the horror I
first felt
’pon
opening my orbs &
hearing gasps
from
the fever-eyed dread doctor
who knelt
by my
side; his whisper-rants,
like striking asps:
It lives! It lives! O hulking,
bolt-necked brute
my name will now forever
brightly shine
' mongst the annals of
the great; my bitter fruit:
this flesh golem brought to
life by Frankenstein!
At
birth was I first moved to
kill this devious
modern,
mad, monstrous rogue Prometheus.
Carl E. Reed is currently employed
as a roofing operations
specialist at a window, siding, and door company just outside Chicago. Former
jobs include: U.S. marine, long-haul trucker, improvisational actor, cab
driver, construction worker, and door-to-door encyclopedia salesman. His poetry
has been published in The Iconoclast, Spectral Realms, Black
Petals, & Deathlehem: Holiday Horrors; short stories in Black
Gate, newWitch, and Sci-Fi Lampoon magazines. “Dinner at
Winthrop’s: A Tale of Sufferance” was published 2020 in the weird romance
anthology Down the Rabbit Hole, vol. III. His most recent weird
fictions “Haunted House” and “Night Terror” will appear in Down the Rabbit
Hole, vol. IV: Madness. “The Candidate” will be published in
Penumbra #3. Additional short stories and poems are scheduled to be published
in 2022 and 2023 in various other venues.
