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I Paint My Reality: a Pecha Kucha Poem, by Susan Michele Coronel

3/10/2020

2 Comments

 
Picture
The Two Fridas, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico). 1939.
​The Two Fridas
 
My younger self inquires why my older self
is a raw rose, a fool.
I claw at my heart, 
strap it on my dress --
a red hole that opens & closes 
without bleeding.
Picture
The Wounded Deer, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1946.
The Wounded Deer
 
I’ve stalked my own heart 
with compulsive arrows.
I will never return to how I was before. 
I grasp my self-hatred like sagging plums,
unable to extend my fingers.

Picture
Moses, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1945
​Moses 
 
We’re one moving organism
that began with a lone sperm &
                         an egg, 
its yolk shining in utero,
the bright morning jelly star.
Picture
Henry Ford Hospital (The Flying Bed), by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1932
The Flying Bed
 
At once I birth lobsters & snails,
orchids so violet 
their petals burn my wrists. 
Stones & snails drop through my hips.
After pools of blood spill,
the fetus floats in a jar, 
waters around it congealing to wax.
Picture
The Suicide of Dorothy Hale, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1938
​The Suicide of Dorothy Hale
 
If you won’t marry me,
I’ll wed death, step off a balcony at noon.
My skin will descend 
& alter to milk on the sidewalk.
All other traces of me will evaporate,
back to the sky from which I descended.
Picture
My Grandparents and Me, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1936
​My Grandparents, My Parents and Me
 
My mother paced the halls with needles & spoons
like a parrot trying to merge into wallpaper.
Her leather skin teased 
but never touched me.
The starched & laced collar of her dress 
squeezed her neck until she collapsed.
 
Picture
The Bus, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1929
​The Bus
 
We travel to a market brimming 
with melons, pelicans & bouquets of white lilies.
A housewife nurses her basket, 
fingering rows of just-hatched eggs.
A boy stares out the window, 
knees burning the long bench.
Picture
The Dream, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1929
​The Dream (The Bed)
 
Death is dancing around my bed 
all night long.
Vines on my coverlet advance.
Skeletons snooze
on the canopy.
My pillows contemplate shadows 
nibbling on corners.
Picture
The Broken Column, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1944
​The Broken Column
 
I’m a martyr to Diego’s infidelities,
dancing on my back like tacks.
My spine is blown to smithereens, 
vertebrae smashing bone against bone
Burned, buried, aureate stones 
crumble like chalk.
Picture
Without Hope, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1945
​Without Hope
 
Don’t be shocked by the horror of my insides
fragmented on the canvas like pumpkin pulp.
I can only count on one thing,
a candy skull perfect & white, 
snickering over my bed.
Picture
Memory, the Heart, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1937
​Memory, the Heart
 
My organ has become so large, it’s bigger
than my abdomen.
The dress in which you ravaged me is sleeveless.
I’m wading in water 
with a damaged foot & no arms.
Picture
Girl With Death Mask, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1938
​Girl with Death Mask 
 
They say I look like a doll,
arms, legs & torso in miniature
with a honeyed voice.
I’m dizzy from the same song. 
I wear masks to the fiesta – calacas & tigres --
How could they be frightened 
by someone as small as I?
Picture
My Dress Hangs There, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1933
​My Dress Hangs There
 
America, I don’t worship 
your bourgeois toilets, telephones, skyscrapers, 
or feathered monstrosities
purchased from a Fifth Avenue habadashery.
Across the Hudson smokestacks & water towers
waddle on spindly, metal legs. 
Crucifixes are wrapped
in freshly printed greenbacks.
Picture
Portrait of Cristina, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1928
​Portrait of Cristina My Sister
 
Your skin is churned butter.
When my organs shriveled 
into strips of poblano peppers,
their seeds rattled in their cases.
You opened your legs to Diego,
his cock poking your languid skirts
as casually as turning on a faucet.
You’re a jagged leaf 
disguised as a flower.
Picture
Roots, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1943
​Roots
 
Because I cannot wean a child,
I birth vines 
that originate from atria, ventricles 
& semilunar valves. 
My blood circulates, 
flowing to parched earth.
Picture
Frida in Coyoacan, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1943
​In Coyoacan
 
In the Jardin Centenario coyotes guzzle from fountains.
Laurel trees sway their hips.
Vendors at Plaza Hidalgo proffer 
sopes, quesadillas y los mas ricas helados.
I pace the streets, 
heels clicking between each cobblestone,
cloc, cloc, cloc, 
as carriages thunder by.
Picture
Self Portrait with Monkeys, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1943
​Self-Portrait with Monkeys
 
Four seasons, 
four corners of table & bed.
My four monkeys, your black fur brushes
the nape of my neck.
I feed you bits of mango & banana
and you squeal among the leaves.
“Los Fridos,” 
you are my four apprentices,
four apertures to the world.
Picture
Self Portrait with Cropped Hair, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1940
​Self Portrait with Cropped Hair
 
You loved me for my black thicket,
 horse’s mane,
rope-coiled, 
               luxury-long
 siren’s song.
I’ve lobbed it off,
            seaweed-strong,
                           with shears.
You won’t see me anymore.
Picture
My Nurse and I, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1937
My Nurse and I

I was like a calf at a dairy farm
sucking milk in mechanical release – 
             drip & suck, drip & suck.
Mother nursed my sister
but had no love left for me.
I do not recall her face,
for it was a pre-Colombian mask --
features without feeling, eyes without souls.
With one hand she weld me 
to her massive breast.
With the other, a bottle of tequila.
Picture
The Wounded Table, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1940
​The Wounded Table
 
What a feast of my last hours. 
Every dimension of me devours 
chilles rellenos, guacamole and mole poblano.
At the table: 
Wounded Me, always inviting arrows to enter;
Androgynous Me, jaw sharpened like a man’s;
Martyr Me, Christ and high priestess;
Nude Me, Mexican Venus;
Elegant, Colonial Me, eyeing my subjects surreptitiously;
Third-eye Me, for the mirage that opens its doors;
Diego, for I am he & he is me; 
Earth Goddess Me, because my art is all of me;
The Lord Herself, who presides over Earth
& melts into Sun and Moon, 
mesmerizing me.

Susan Michele Coronel

Susan Michele Coronel graduated with a B.A. in English from Indiana University-Bloomington and an M.S. Ed. in Applied Linguistics/Teaching English as a Second Language from Queens College (CUNY). She is a lifelong lover of poetry, and has studied with Yusef Komunyakaa, Tina Chang, Joanna Fuhrman and Annie Finch. Her poem "British Rhapsody" was published in issue #7 of Newtown Literary Journal. She has worked as a journalist and blogger, and as an elementary and ESL teacher. Since 2004 she has lived in Ridgewood, Queens, where she owns and directs a preschool/daycare program.

2 Comments
Saad Ali link
3/10/2020 06:22:25 pm

This is amazing work i.e. both the painting ani ecphrases.
Best,
Saad Ali

Reply
Susan Michele Coronel
5/11/2020 01:41:53 pm

Thank you so much!

Reply



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