The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • The Ekphrastic Academy
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead

Frida Kahlo, Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, by A. Robert Lee

7/28/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1940

Frida Kahlo, Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird

I think it’s the audacity, the insouciant composure.  
Christ’s martyrdom appropriated.
Mexico, and life-beyond, she had her own calvaries.
Polio. Traffic wounds. Pierced womb. Amputation.

But no Santa Teresa. Flesh and politics pressed close.
Rivera always, but Trotsky and La Baker. 
Her own visited self of a half-hundred portraits.
Staring. Defiant. The certainty bred of pain.

You can do the symbolism.
The hummingbird spent of luck and good fortune.
The Poe black cat with warning stare.
The spider monkey all fidget and chance.

Her body mocks supplication, even the white robe. 
The neck vaunts its necklace crown of thorns, a splatter of blood.
The bunched hair wears butterfly clips, the dragonfly hovers.
The moustache refuses depilation, maquillage.

The eyes repudiate your might-be sympathy.
The eyebrows double-arch in black, a bold frown of challenge.
What to make of those jungle leaves, green, yellow?
Exotica, the plant growths of an inner self?

Magic-real, surreal, does not quite fit the bill.
It’s Frida’s sense of alien presence, her own.
A force of being held from outside herself, displacement.
Sumptuous, exact, the un-bodied body.

​A. Robert Lee

This poem first appeared in  Imaginarium: Sightings, Galleries, Sightlines.

A. Robert Lee was Professor in the English department at Nihon University Tokyo, 1997-2011. British-born, he previously taught at the University of Kent, UK. His creative work includes Japan Textures: Sight and Word, with Mark Gresham (2007), Tokyo Commute: Japanese Customs and Way of       Life Viewed from the Odakyu Line (2011), and the collections Ars Geographica: Maps and Compasses (2012), Portrait and Landscape: Further Geographies (2013),  Imaginarium: Sightings, Galleries, Sightlines (2013), Off Course: Roundabouts and Deviations (2016), Passsword: A Book of Locks and Keys (2016), Written Eye: Visuals/Verse (2017), Alunizaje/Lunar Landings, with Blas Miras (2019), Writer Directory: A Book of Encounters (2019) and Suspicious Circumstances. What? (2020). Among his academic publications are Multicultural American Literature: Comparative Black, Native, Latino/a and Asian American Fictions (2003), which won the American Book Award in 2004, Modern American Counter Writing: Beats Outriders, Ethnics (2010) and The Beats: Authorships,        Legacies (2019).  Currently he lives in Murcia, Spain. 

​
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    The Ekphrastic Review
    Picture
    Current Prompt
    COOKIES/PRIVACY

    This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies.

    Opt Out of Cookies
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Join us: Facebook and Bluesky
    @ekphrasticreview.



    ​
    ​Archives
    ​

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Lorette C. Luzajic [email protected] 

  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • The Ekphrastic Academy
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead