Five After Frida Kahlo, by Barbara Krasner

Thinking of Death, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1943

The Labyrinth
 
Without knowing it, I have entered
that maze of twists and turns
that whirls me around until I face myself.
 
My arms and legs scrape against
the foliage, tiny impalements 
into my flesh. I can’t find my way out.
 
All roads lead to me, the me with
the thinning, falling out hair, the me
with the swollen eyes, the red blotches
 
from long-ago lesions that just won’t fade.
I take a scarf out of my pocket and tie it
around my head the way my great-grandmother
 
did. If I find my way out,
I am getting a wig and wear that the way
my great-grandmother wore her sheitl.
 
I will carefully tuck my own hair underneath,
until the vestiges of my authentic self
are no longer visible. My great-grandmother
 
sits at her kitchen table peeling potatoes
as I make a right turn. She says, There
are no mistakes in life. We bear what we can.
 
We cook, we kiss, we clean. She sighs and returns
to her peelings after she squeezes my hand.
 
I continue on. I see smoke. I rush toward it.
There on my left is my mother smoking
yet another Kent. Listen, baby, she says,

There are no mistakes in life, except that 
lollapalooza you made when you married
the village idiot. I forgive you. You gave me
 
my grandson. Such a punim.” She kisses
me on the forehead, and mutters baby again,
wrapping me in a cloak to shield me
 
from the thorny bushes. But she too
waves me away so she can watch her stories
on the television. I turn another corner.
 
My grandmother, the one I never knew,
says, Finally, you’re here. I’ve been wanting
to meet you. Come, sit. She motions
 
toward an upside-down pickle barrel
near the radiator. We have a lot to catch
up on. I want to stay. I want to hear her.
 
But storm clouds hover above. Thunder
rumbles, lightning flashes. My grandmother
evaporates. I hear rushing water
 
and wend toward the sound, maybe
there’s an exit. I make it out of the labyrinth,
only to find a river. I wade in and begin to swim
 
as my great-grandmother, mother, and grandmother
guide my strokes to the other side of despair.

Roots, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1943

​Ghost Town
 
Roots push up through the ground. Spectral fingers of my great-grandfather Yossel and my great-grandmother Chana weave DNA vines around my waist, hips, and ankles, pull me to the earth. You are one of us, mamashaynele. My ancestral roots roll me, drag me back through the earth. I emerge among the pinecones of Leshner Forest, among the eighty-year-old Soviet trenches. The forest where Yossel and Chana once discussed their future on a Shabbos afternoon. I want to run for the train station across No Name Road, but the windows are shuttered, weeds grow between blocks of concrete sidewalk. Old train schedules in Polish, Yiddish, Russian, and German hang on the exterior walls by rusty nails. The time is up. There’s no way out. The Soviet trains heading east into the interior are long gone.

Portrait of Frida’s Family (unfinished), by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1950-1954

​
​Family Portrait, 1912
 
The Krasner family lines up in three rows,
awaiting the Newark photographer’s
camera flash. My immigrant great-grandparents
sit squarely in the middle. Bryna 
with her sunken cheeks and matron’s wig.
Mottel with his carefully groomed white beard,
black skullcap and western suit with a bowtie
and celluloid collar. Granddaughters 
with giant hairbows and great-grandchildren, too,
with high-button leather shoes. 
 
Not shown: two daughters who stayed behind
in Russia. A third daughter who married
the unsavory, older man with children
from previous relationships. 
 
Not shown: Bryna’s worry about her family’s diaspora.
 
Not shown: the fast-approaching deaths
of these three daughters from influenza
and childbirth. 
 
Not shown: Bryna 
holding out arms and bosom
to motherless children.

Tree of Hope, Remain Strong, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1946

​Tree Orchard
 
Like the oak tree outside my childhood home window, I weather the years of rising and falling down our front brick stairs. Untangling my legs from bicycle wheel spokes. Picking up my concussed head from the street game of kickball.
 
Like the red maple tree outside my home now, the tree the EMTs pass with me, barefooted and dressed only in a nightgown, on the gurney. I return a week later by medical transport, following the cracked sidewalk step by step to my front door.
 
I have been the weeping willow, bowing my head to my trunk, asking for death under the moonlight. But the wind whispers, it’s not yet my time, under the sunlight.
 
I dress in red, tie my few remaining strands of hair with red ribbon, and let my walker rest against the ruffled hem of my dress.

The Suicide of Dorothy Hale, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1938

Fleeting Beauty
 
From the Hampshire House height of aspirations,
she swirled in early morning clouds
dressed in her little black dress and 
yellow rose corsage. She swirled
in her stole of stratus status, reaching
for her destination. Once there, 
the clouds and the sidewalk cried for her,
their sobs extending above and below,
to the left and to the right, until they mingled
with her blood and stained the frame of her life.
Her eyes, still open, ask: 
Wouldn’t you have done the same?

Barbara Krasner

Barbara Krasner drove seven hours from her home in New Jersey to view the special exhibit, Frida Kahlo: Beyond the Myth at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. She brought her rollator. Kahlo’s art has been speaking to her since she’s been grappling with the confluence of several chronic conditions since September 2024. She holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. The author of three poetry chapbooks, including the ekphrastic Poems of the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press, 2025) and the forthcoming ekphrastic collection, The Night Watch (Kelsay Books), her work has appeared in seventy literary journals. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com.