FEBRUARY 28, 2026

by Alice Hartley

Photography & Reporting by Zohreh Saberi, Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2026

Frankenstein’s monster,

from parts lived before.

I wonder,

if we made a monster from

the little ones' parts

left unburied,

would its limbs

remember they wanted to run,

with nowhere to go?

If muscle remembers,

will our monster,

be doomed to flee,

to arms

too weak to hold?

Alice Hartley is a public health nurse in Milwaukee. She has been writing since she was five years old, starting with picture books about her friends. As an adult, she mostly writes poetry and horror stories. She has a found family that includes two cats who don't get along...but four adults that do.

DEPARTURE

by Thomas R. Smith

January 20, 2021

The helicopter circling Washington

before the inauguration—what was it

really we were seeing in the sky over

the Capitol going farther away,

growing smaller in the eyes of the nation?

Almost pure archetype, the Unloved One

inflicting his unlovedness on the kingdom.

And perhaps nothing human could have changed that.

Too late, the damage done in the cradle

cemented, a secular damnation.

Everything ruined, everything fallen, and

worst of all nothing learned. I don’t want

to wallow in the pathos of that self-

inflicted doom. Far better to save our

tears for those four hundred thousand who

needn’t have died, and for the uncounted

number of injured he’s left in his wake.

Air Force One lifts off from Andrews

to the strains of “My Way,” a last bloody

handprint blazoned on the wall of ego.

It didn’t have to end this way.  Or more

terribly, maybe it did.  Do you

remember how Mary Shelley ended

Frankenstein? “He was soon borne away

by the waves and lost in distance and darkness.”

As the wind blows the clouds away from

the sun on a January day above

the Capitol, a helicopter like

a dark airborne wound grows smaller and

smaller until it can no longer be seen.

Thomas R. Smith is a poet and teacher living in River Falls, Wisconsin. He teaches at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. His most recent poetry collection is The Glory (Red Dragonfly Press).

THE CRISPR TWINS

by Albert Burgesser





Everyone saw it coming, my friend,
the Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial.

But what better way to ring in the end

of the Frankenstein bicentennial?

CRAWPOCALYPSO

by Rick Mullin

The marbled crayfish is a mutant species that clones itself, scientists report. The population is exploding in Europe, but the species appears to have originated only about 25 years ago. Ranja Andriantsoa for The New York Times, February 5, 2018

Met excuses aan Hank Williams.

Goodbye Zoe, whaddya know, me oh my oh,
Me gotta go throw ‘way dem books filed under “Bio”!
Frankenstein got claws ‘n’ spine, me oh my oh,
Clone of a beast gonna have some feast like Russian spy-o!
Jambalaya and a crawfish pie a la car-tay.
Eurozone gotta crustay-shone too big to par-tay!
Au revoir to the reservoir, and adieu to you all,
Ain’t no bang gonna end our thang cause it’s a-sex-ual.






Rick Mullin's newest poetry collection is Transom.

THE MONSTER

by Rick Mullin


on the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein*

for Roald Hoffmann

My fame is your reflection. I am known
as Frankenstein. Well known. Prometheus Bound
shall not have half the legs that creak and groan
beneath this body I have lately found.
This bleeding mouth, these rheumy eyes impearled
in mists of the eternal night . . . how odd.
The murderer you’d hoped for is at large,
your manufactured destiny. My God,
look squarely on the bloodlust of your charge.
Do you not own the spirochete that curled
in my electrocuted heart? Am I
not yours, my friend? Or did your aim draw higher?
I’ll not apologize. I, too, aim high.
In your good name I haul this fatal fire
to the northernmost extremity of the world.


*Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus debuted on January 1, 1818, published in London by Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones.




Rick Mullin's newest poetry collection is Transom.

TRICK OR TREAT

by Gil Hoy

Corporations are no longer
inanimate sterile things.

They’re now breathing fleshy
with blood money flowing
through wheels levers pistons
rhythmically turning
deep sea blue to ghoul red

anointing black robed
Victor Frankensteins
to keep Fiends well nourished
and magically cause Creatures
to rise from the dead
with their wild incantations.

While Monsters use up
all free speech that is uttered
mere mortals can't buy a word
just a consonant here and again
found in a graveyard.

Some Adams of Victor’s Labors
think (?) contraception
against religion (!), then
Wretches trump people (!?)
as The Modern Prometheus

dissects ghostly law
like a science school project
held together by webs
taken out by morticians
with the afternoon’s trash.

With all mad scientists
the Vile Insects may elect
the black sky’s the limitless.
In the meantime

have mercy
on the poor corporation
yellow lips watery eyes
shriveled face
resist the temptation
to be a bigot.

Gil Hoy studied poetry at Boston University, and started writing his own poetry in February of this year. Since then, Gil’s poems have been published in Soul Fountain, The New Verse News, The Story Teller Magazine, the Clark Street Review, Eye On Life Magazine, and Stepping Stones Magazine.