Kathleen Bryson

Three-Eyed Frankenstein (Rewilding)

This morning my old pal Maz. 
Our sun had ejaculated on the road.
I walk there in dreams yellow bukkake,
that sparse, spread-out London or Anchorage. 
Wherever, on a hill. And down the incline I 
went and looked across the way. And there 
was Maz walking up the incline 
with the big painting. 
And I shouted out, “Maz, Maz!” 
And he crossed to my side, 
lugging the gold-framed artwork 
he had bought at a charity shop of a
three-eyed Frankenstein monster. 
 
And I admired it. 
And he had something else, 
a smaller photograph with jail bars,
enclosing shiny happy people. 
Something to do with music. 
And maybe my dad in there, too. 
I don’t know. Maybe not.
I watched the painting for Maz; 
he had to go do something. 
So I watched it for him for a while. I
don’t remember how we said goodbye,
but we did. I think he later 
continued walking up the hill with a
big charity-shop painting of a
three-eyed Frankenstein. If you knew 
James Patrick Blackden Marriott, you would 
know that buying a charity-shop painting of a
 
three-eyed Frankenstein painting and 
listening to experimental music is exactly 
what he’d be doing in the afterlife.
These three-eyed ravens from
shows like Game of Thrones O Mary 
Shelley with your psychic New Age third eye,
did you foresee my pair of ceramic 
salt and pepper shakers, the happy couple 
the Bride of Frankenstein and
her groom I have a white streak in my dark 
hair since the pandemic and never had one
grey hair before; it wears on you 
it does. And then I decided to do the painting
very quickly this morning so it now 
 
exists in real life too.
Three months into the pandemic I
dreamed of a goat with tea in its udders


Alaskan-born Kathleen Bryson received her Ph.D. in Evolutionary Anthropology from University College London,. She studies prejudice/empathy in humans and other great apes and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at University of Oxford. She also is a published author of over 100 fiction pieces, including 3 novels of literary fiction. The most recent novel is the experimental The Stagtress, published by Fugue State Press (2019), and her non-fiction book Why We Struggle With Ambiguity: The Quiddity Question will be published by Ethics Press International in 2023. Her poems have been published in MagmaEunoia Review and the Bombay Literary Magazine, amongst many others. An artist-writer-filmmaker for many years, she has had 10 solo art exhibitions, amongst them Once Upon a Spacetime at the Royal Institution (2019). She has just completed her second directed feature film Baked Alaska, for which she wrote the screenplay and performs. Read about her at www.kathleenbryson.com