The Bride of Frankenberry
By John Sara
When you died, they held
your funeral in the cereal aisle;
laid your bones to rest in a casket
of cardboard. Your corpse smelled
of strawberries, your flesh, sweet
with sugar, bled synthetic pink from
every orifice. Don’t you know
beauty is made to be devoured?
Pieces of you sat in bowls
on the breakfast table, filled with
the milk of Mary Shelley’s grief,
stirred with a metal spoon into
the mouths of hungry men, mad
scientists who sought to stitch
you back together in
imperfect fractures.
I wonder if they pumped your body
with embalming fluid or corn
syrup, and which of the two
kept your brain alive,
heart still beating at the bottom
of the bag; a prize
for monstrous hands,
digging through pink ghosts
for a creature of their own making.
John Sara is a writer from Parma, Ohio. He received his BFA in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University and is currently pursuing his MFA at Ashland University. His work has been featured in Prairie Margins, Paper Dragon, The Evening Universe, and Schlock! Webzine.
