Tim Lynch
Dry
to Creighton Chaney
Dr. Mannering: You’re insane at times and you know it. You’re sane enough now though to know what you’re doing.
—Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), Curt Siodmak
Only a sequel, yet the franchise loomed
as, staggered between shots, the effects
artist made your face another face.
First, a close-up in bed, pure you,
before you slumped into the chair
to put some hair on your chin
& get back in bed. Then up & a little more
hair of the dog. You drank barrels on set,
wrestled whoever didn’t want to
& then the bed again. Then more hair,
the bed, then more, then bed, the barrel,
more, the bed, the barrel, more & on
til not quite animal, not quite man,
skulking sculpted trees.
Already, your father’d bludgeoned you.
Still, your hair was falling out.
Again, you’re dead before your movie ends.
When I dated a girl who camped sometimes,
I bought a minus 40 sleeping bag.
I listened to John Mayer for another,
played a gamer later on. I have been so many
men. Once,
a friend & I slapped each other’s faces
in the middle of a party, back & forth,
harder & harder, as if softer
could never be more than a joke.
My jaw still gnarls out of place,
but I liked it til the audience cheered, or,
I liked that too, but they wanted more
& same. Is that how it feels
to be typecast, to be slapped & slapped
til you’re not quite sure if you want it
or are just unable to not need it?
Your father, Man of a Thousand Faces,
Horror legend who lived all his own,
Be a good plumber, he probably said.
Take your chances on a boring life.
What I would do some days, still, to be beaten with that silver cane.
A wolf’s reflective head—my face—bashed into my face.
Tim Lynch is a Delawarean whose writing appears or is forthcoming in Broken Antler Magazine, StoryQuarterly, Cotton Xenomorph, Vinyl, and other fine publications. Interviews with poets appear in The Adroit Journal and Tell Tell Poetry, and his first screenplay was a 2020 ScreenCraft Horror semifinalist. Say hi @timlynchthatsit.