Frankenstein’s Monster Lives In The Sewers

Across the street, water seeped up into the dry autumn air,

mystically it rose and flowed down the street as if asphalt bled,

as if its skin became coarse from the fallen leaves and crude nails

of the full moon night decided to scratch it smooth.

Perhaps, the water attempted to escape from what lied beneath,

alligators roaming the sewers gazing up into showers for young flesh,

maybe even Frankenstein’s creature wondering why he left the glaciers behind.

He would walk among the sewers, water and alligators fleeing from him,

and knowing that stinging ice was better than the stench surrounding him.

He would gaze at his reflection in bile-filled waters, and know man molded him.

While rats hobbled through the mirror, he would question if man molded him a soul or not.

Above I would look at my reflection in the water streaming down the street,

it would be rat and bile-free, and I would wonder how I was molded, yet I

would know that I have been given a soul, and hearing The Creature’s whimpers,

my soul would lift from my fleshy vessel temporarily to join ghosts in chains, all of us

bound up, failing about, kicking up dust to fill the atmosphere on the October moon.

— Alex Hawkins