Amy Riddell

Frankenstein Fix

Body robbers
in surgical scrubs

put the pink
back into

my husband’s
cheeks,

his bad liver
a jaundiced rebuke

removed for further study
in a basement lab.

When he arose
from the donor's deathbed,

he winked
and skipped down

the hall
almost resembling

himself,
reassembled

as he was,
even more handsome

in black handsewn
stitch,

the recycled bits
sweetly

reanimating
his smile

still
beautiful,

no longer
backlit by dread,

the whole
of him

a piecemeal
masterpiece.

Amy Riddell is the author of Bullets in the Jewelry Box (FutureCycle Press 2012) and a chapbook Narcissistic Injury (Pudding House, 2009). Her work has appeared in such journals as Prairie Schooner, Black Warrior Review, and Birmingham Poetry Review.