Frida the Obstinate
(for ginamarie lobianco)
The last time Frida spoke to God, thinking she'd painted the best Madonna ever...
_______________________________
Lady steps over clover one day, from her home, granted her prayer— Ave Matuta!—to turn into Frida from cold Mary of Ephesus: and to dignify it, saying,
"Release me, God, from all yr gabfest, & if not, sensing the threat of dust that turns wet, then word the real sex of me straight to Olympia, with my one bare breast, cypress rouge, gaunt chin
No more the swelling angel seed for me!
No more that hovel instead of alabaster, the virgin's coarse sage while I see there real marshy heat rise up round her ankles, by the harbour walls— a temple in place of huts!
Leave me my bare head, half-chignon that's been clawed back hatefully by you, hoping to kill this need to compete in games
It's better than not letting the sun fill shadowy gaps, between lips & nose, and as I'm still young, between my two real thighs!"
Arresting spite of a father's now sounds in her ear, tight sutured ear: God to Frida now,
"¿Dónde está mi duende?
Mother of Lesbos!
Now I find you facing temples, wide- browed, obstinate, trading good stone for my salty bogs
My skin-and-bones girl with plum-coloured nip, lest we part at Venus, eyes locking, take the path of a femur road to love's shining vacuity; & bleed for it, with one sorrowing eye, and arrive there the blue-ringed girl, after some trial, as if you got tired of my Hebron skies
Faithless, so-so girl, staring staring at her lips, hold your side awhile, gnashed by yr own finny hand Lumpy, self-evolving, purpling girl: hold both bloody sides & keep yr hand away from me!
Goat-like chins always crush into salt"
New Ephesian groves scarf her anew but as a madonna's falling chiton manages only a little dampness, it does
stop some bleeding
A sea-urchin grows at her neck, with a half-formed nimbus shell to tell the old Mary from Frida
2 comments:
Interesting sequence, Conrad.
Here's a poem I wrote about Kahlo some years back. Not in my usual style, but do I have a style?
Frida Kahlo
green red yellow orange blue pink black
passionate at it regurgitated
bled laughed out loud screamed
who what how why where when
purple turquoise lemon grey chartreuse
extracted it cracked milky glass
lit up flew down the street cocked an eye
jammed its barrel cobbled throngs
ass whinnied red fire brands
horn smoldering under adobe
white sand colorless blind sun
sank pouted stinking revenge
bastards bitches polluted history
flunked patience died mad at piece
Curtis,
do I see the influence of your great mentor here?
"cracked milky glass" is lapidary.
Yes, style is inseparable from the poet: necessarily. A poem's, a person's rich texture is in inseparably a property of poet, poem. Inseparably
We're not Fregeans
Post a Comment