Poem: "The Grabber"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem came out of the April 7, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from ravan. It also fills the "Exception" square in my 4-1-26 card for the Flower Fest Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by janetmiles. It belongs to the series Monster House.


"The Grabber"


The monster under the bed
and the monster in the closet
were trying to comfort a cousin
who had abandoned his post.

"I just don't want to do it anymore,"
said the monster unhoused. "I am
so done with scaring ordinary folks,
especially kids, who don't deserve it.
I don't know what to do next, though."

"What about a closet that hardly ever gets
opened?" said the monster in the closet.

"That's boring," said the monster unhoused.
"I do want a job, just not my old one."

"There are those vibrating beds in
hotels," said the monster under the bed.
"Maybe you could find a broken one and
just make it vibrate properly again."

"Ugh, no," said the monster unhoused.
"Do you know what kind of kooky things
some of the humans do in those beds?"

"Well," said the skeleton out of the closet,
"maybe you would like to do what I do."

"What's that?" said the monster unhoused.

"I scare people who deserve to be scared,
mostly politicians," the skeleton explained.
"One of them talks about grabbing women --
I wonder how he would like being grabbed."

The monster unhoused took exception
to men mistreating women. "I like
that idea," he said. "Maybe I could
become the Grabber Under the Bed."

So he moved to Washington,
which had lots of politicians.

Whenever one of them tried
to bother a woman, the Grabber
would reach out from under the bed
and clutch his ankles with cold hands.

It was fun making them scream and run.
 

Comments

[elinox]

Brilliant! What a great career change.