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Jon Boisvert

Fragments of an adolescent biography not unlike your own

Frankenstein Writes a Poem

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Frankenstein's home is surrounded by fields
Each summer corn is planted, grows, gets cut down
The farmer drives a yellow airplane over the rows and back
painting a soft mist
a poison made for the corn to resist, to love
Frankenstein looks up into the hazy bowl of sky
He writes a poem

Frankenstein tells no one about his poem
He doesn't write it down
He walks on the edge and whispers
counting his steps and syllables
to remember this, his first creation:

O Beautiful Corn

To a mouse corn is like a tree
For birds it is a shining sea
But tall and green as it can be
Corn is like a brother to me


The Neighborhood

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Frankenstein watches a family of wolves
move in to the farm down the road
The next day he sees Wolf Boy in his class at school
He is from Chicago & has beautiful long blond hair
Frankenstein has never seen on a boy
He brings the Wolf Boy a gift
Go away Wolf Boy says, I'm running away
& the next day he does just that
Frankenstein takes his gift to the other wolves
& they all keep growling Go away


The Pawn Shop

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Frankenstein skips school & walks to his mother's apartment
but there are many store-windows along the way
and many alleys
He mostly takes the alleys
except by the pawn shop
They have Mortal Kombat there
Frankenstein goes in & pulls
two quarters from his pocket
selects Scorpion (his favorite)
mashes his open right hand over buttons
He squints & hunches & tips
up his heels & blood sloshes out
he says I'm never going back to school


Cable TV

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for John Beardsley

Frankenstein has quit going to school b/c his mother has cable
MTV is his favorite
he sits for hours (they feel
like minutes)
He keeps the blinds closed
so no one knows he's there
& as the bulbs of his eyes
burst & bloom in the dark they play Smells Like Teen Spirit again
and Frankenstein decides he will play a Fender
Grow long hair to hide his face


Facts

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Pluto isn't a planet, and the praying mantis does not eat her lover except in captivity. Frankenstein fears what might enter the empty spaces where facts used to be, holes he imagines to be a good size for hands, bird-eating tarantulas—but what if these, too, aren't real?—what will come then? he wonders, awake at night in an airport or movie theater or tent in the yard. In any case, the moon is full, and people are out in the fields searching for a monster they call the Beast of Bray Road. They have cameras and guns, and Frankenstein knows, just as the monster knows, that the world will be smaller tomorrow, smaller the next day.


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