Jonathan Minton
Le Manoir du Diable (1896)
The cauldron dominates the first screen,
but this is not an instrument of witchcraft.
It is a magician’s trick in which
all this mute, gray life begins to disturb.
The devil disappears into smoke,
only to reappear as a skeleton, then a bat
to frighten and astonish the baffled chevaliers.
Objects blink off screen in this flickering void.
The beautiful assistant arises from vapor,
draped in her white tunic, then transforms
into thorn-crooked crones who circle them
until one flees, and the other
finds the courage to wield a crucifix
and bring the film to its conclusion.
There is nothing left to be seen
in this small engine of terror and wonder,
so we shape-shift to other scenes
where nature deforms
into effects of shadow and light,
bats dangling in the elastic air, the world
turned mutable and liquid, such marvels
that startle us back to the dark.
Frankenstein (1910)
In this alchemy of creation, the mind is cauldron
in which nothing moves
until the monstrous twitches in its flame.
It doesn’t burn, but layers itself outward
like the scales of strange fishes, thickening in the ascension
until the water hidden in the belly and veins boils
in the smoky, owl-yellow furnace.
What can be discovered amid the unclassified residuum?
There is no Promethean mountain.
To want to see a spectacle will engender a spectacle.
On the laboratory table, the specimen makes itself black,
it makes itself white, it makes itself red, until another voice
says, “concoct until it appears green, and that
is the soul. It will shine like eyes of beasts.”
The camera devours its subject,
if you stare into this mirror.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
“Monster” originates from the Latin word monere, to warn.
The jagged staircase is an omen, the spear-shaped alleys,
or the lady in white who passes us by.
You can silently stare at the trees bent
into impossible angles, or the cardboard houses
stacked at the top of the hill.
You can sleep walk through any small town,
but deep in the cave of our ears, a hunch-backed goblin
snaps his fingers and calls for another way out.
Like tunnels in a labyrinth they all dead-end
back to the asylum of ourselves.
The threat is not the axe in a Minotaur’s hand,
but its dark and unblinking eye.
Nosferatu (1922)
The forbidden hand reaches out as shadow from shadow.
Somewhere there are eyes that stare too wide to close.
As if in a dream, we no longer inhabit heaven or earth.
The world is blurring into untouchable fog, a ghostly thud
of padded foot on a stiletto thin moonbeam.
This is the pressing demon, the owl’s claw around its field mouse.
We can tighten muscle and lip to thwart this plague-bringer,
this filth, this needle-toothed sanguisuge, this winged thing
that will not fly, but the creeping terror will not pass.
The veins writhe at each clinched bite.
If we could open our mouths to speak of this, nothing else
would come slithering out.
Jonathan Minton lives in central West Virginia, where he is a Professor of English at Glenville State University. His books include Letters (Moria Books, 2022), Technical Notes for Bird Government (Telemetry Press, 2018), In Gesture (Dyad Press, 2009), and Lost Languages (Long Leaf Press, 1999). He edits the literary journal Word For/Word (wordforword.info), and curates the Little Kanawha Reading Series.