Quickly
from the Drake Theater I just knew he followed--
black suit hanging like dead stingrays from his body
clodded boots shuffling with preposterous speed
hands outstretched                     unbalanced--
he was coming at me
the Frankenstein monster
not really
destroyed by Abbott or Costello or
how could after all I have seen him rise again for two bits paid over and
over for the dark of Saturday matinees
dispatched again by Dracula
who followed him
who followed me home
and when at night I heard the wind I saw
him push the garage door
down and when that settled
down I knew he climbed
up the stairs creaking
when I came home from school
I crept
before I touched my house
slowly on all fours to peek
through the basement window to see if he waited there for me.

I lived in terror every day for years
not a day without Frankenstein in my life
patiently
inexorably
until
one moment impossible to remember
I forgot
about Frankenstein
perhaps when other monsters came by.

I C U

Above my father’s body
breathing by trickery alone
my hands,
like Houdini’s
levitating the volunteer never before met,
like the priest’s
converting bread to life we believe,
passed over his arms punctured,
taped, festooned with scabs
and plastic tubes.
My hands grazed his hair
lightly not to raise him
from his coma
for fear he’d see them
and hate me again for failing
to help him escape
the day before:
“They’re killing me,” he said.
You’re my son. Get me
out,” he begged, “of this.”
I feared he’d pop the tubes
and kill himself,
and I’d have done it.
It seems now a preposterous thing
to worry about this
most serious thing I should
ever have had
to worry about.
He told me, “I’ll
never forgive you.” A man
of his word he was. I did not
want his eyes to open.

Poetry Magazine