Mary Shelley by Elizabeth H. Barbato
She made something monstrous, brought the roof-beams down:
her vindicated will against the facile challenges of men.
Womb of snow, understanding the pull of white silence,
her arms reached out to hold the new world’s fear:
man’s death of self that comes in innocence lost.
On halting floes she balanced her mind,
running easily on ice that seemed
to block any passage, context, discovery.
She knew no Paradise exists for us to claim,
just bitter drafts of scientific thought
and a man who is not a man
looking back at us through every night’s window.
For Mary let us hear the doctor first,
made readers squirm at his inelegant love
far more than the scraping of charnel-nights.
In gray light his compromise came to him,
citing birthright, imagination, electricity,
and showing all his naked scars for compassion.
Who is not more than the sum of his parts;
who is not claimed as kin by many corpses?
Elizabeth H Barbato is an English teacher born and raised through her college years in New England. She ended up in New Jersey, where for fourteen years she has taught writing, drama and music to every age from kindergarteners to high school seniors. She’s spent the past several summers finishing her doctorate, fishing in VT, and going to northern Scotland to check out the Picts (there aren’t any left). This summer she’s sailing to the Galapagos.
She has poems in current or forthcoming editions of Apple Valley Review, Poetrybay, The Litchfield Review, Foliate Oak, and Stride.
