Dear Dr. Frankenstein

I, too, know the science of building men

Out of fragments in little light

Where I’ll be damned if lightning don’t

Strike as I forget one

May have a thief’s thumb,

Another, a murderer’s arm,

And watch the men I’ve made leave

Like an idea I meant to write down,

Like a vehicle stuck

In reverse, like the monster

God came to know the moment

Adam named animals and claimed

Eve, turning from heaven to her

As if she was his

To run. No word he said could be tamed.

No science. No design. Nothing taken

Gently into his hand or your hand or mine,

Nothing we erect is our own.