Benjamin Blackhurst
Out of the Mouth of Frankenstein's Monster (I)
a cento
I have my mouth (two-thirds of
a laughing mouth, that won’t
drown) to try to tell you
how odd I look: like a man, flesh-
figured, impregnable of eye
(gibbous, mirrored), the ample
side-round of the chest; majestic
antediluvian jaw, belly
(slashed, bleeds pinkly),
a bouquet
of limbs—I’ve tried to wear
my sheddings so graceful-
ly, but bulk, pure matter
is an aberration I have taught
myself to accept.
(The soul is a jot
of moonlight, knotted
smoke, of weeping silver.)
It is the burden of life.
My thoughts are all
a case of knives, waiting to be
shaken open by some feelings
(bitter sweet ligatures finally breaking).
To be borrowed, to be assembled
again—no one is more afraid
of this than me.
To be part
of the treetops and the blueness--
that is all in the backwaters, the safeties
of the past—imitating a god.
Once, I saw a bee drown in honey,
and I understood:
all beasts are happy.
Just speak
as plainly as you can: say
I will not praise your body;
no one is on your side; no one
doubts who owns the heavens.
I say, what is there in all this clutter
that loves you?
*Many thanks to Mary Szybist, Elizabeth Arnold, Kara van de Graaf, Karen An-Hwei Lee, Lance Larsen, Karen Volkman, Emily Dickinson, John Ashbery, Walt Whitman, dawn lonsinger, Adam Scheffler, Afshan Shafi, Zach Savich, Lisa Williams, Lisel Mueller, Claudia Emerson, Rita Dove, Safiya Sinclair, Jim Harrison, George Herbert, Keetje Kuipers, Louise Gluck, Elaine Equi, Kimberly Grey, Diana Marie Delgado, Frank O’Hara, Tina Schumann, Maya Catherine Popa, Carl Phillips, Nikos Kazantzakis, Christopher Marlowe, Michael Lavers, Erin Belieu, Fleur Adcock, Marjorie Stelmach, and Jay Hopler.
I have my mouth (two-thirds of
a laughing mouth, that won’t
drown) to try to tell you
how odd I look: like a man, flesh-
figured, impregnable of eye
(gibbous, mirrored), the ample
side-round of the chest; majestic
antediluvian jaw, belly
(slashed, bleeds pinkly),
a bouquet
of limbs—I’ve tried to wear
my sheddings so graceful-
ly, but bulk, pure matter
is an aberration I have taught
myself to accept.
(The soul is a jot
of moonlight, knotted
smoke, of weeping silver.)
It is the burden of life.
My thoughts are all
a case of knives, waiting to be
shaken open by some feelings
(bitter sweet ligatures finally breaking).
To be borrowed, to be assembled
again—no one is more afraid
of this than me.
To be part
of the treetops and the blueness--
that is all in the backwaters, the safeties
of the past—imitating a god.
Once, I saw a bee drown in honey,
and I understood:
all beasts are happy.
Just speak
as plainly as you can: say
I will not praise your body;
no one is on your side; no one
doubts who owns the heavens.
I say, what is there in all this clutter
that loves you?
*Many thanks to Mary Szybist, Elizabeth Arnold, Kara van de Graaf, Karen An-Hwei Lee, Lance Larsen, Karen Volkman, Emily Dickinson, John Ashbery, Walt Whitman, dawn lonsinger, Adam Scheffler, Afshan Shafi, Zach Savich, Lisa Williams, Lisel Mueller, Claudia Emerson, Rita Dove, Safiya Sinclair, Jim Harrison, George Herbert, Keetje Kuipers, Louise Gluck, Elaine Equi, Kimberly Grey, Diana Marie Delgado, Frank O’Hara, Tina Schumann, Maya Catherine Popa, Carl Phillips, Nikos Kazantzakis, Christopher Marlowe, Michael Lavers, Erin Belieu, Fleur Adcock, Marjorie Stelmach, and Jay Hopler.
Biography
Benjamin Blackhurst (he/him) is a second-year PhD student at the University of Utah, where he lives with CFS/ME and (almost as pitiably) zero cats. You can find his work in letters, elsewhere, Western Humanities Review, and elsewhere.
