Monster-Life

You might as well learn
to live like six feet
of bolts and scars
scraping down the avenue

if you want to master
the monster-life.

Of course, monsters will always lack etiquette
or toes. That's why towns
bully them into abandoned cul-de-sacs.

Surely the Wolf-Man understood,
even as his hair howled
under the floors of the living

where all the lonely roam.
Even Frankenstein, his face
zigzagged
by cross-stitches like a quilt,

wanted to surface
a little less like disaster.
But when your body mirrors
the strange, mysterious

mind that made it,
what can you do but walk
into the darkness

and discover yourself?

Copyright © 2010 Nathan Anderson All rights reserved
from Iron Horse Literary Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission