Frida Kahlo Speaks: by Barbara Crooker

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

Frida Kahlo Speaks:
Fidelity is a bourgeois virtue.
Diego Rivera

There are two Fridas, the one you want,
and the one you don’t want.  You might
have thought I wore this white dress
for you, Diego, piled this hibiscus in my hair,
threaded azul chunks of sky around my throat.
But I did it for myself.  I paint myself. Look
at me.  I wear a necklace of thorns;
a hummingbird dangles between my breasts.
My heart is a bloody shrine trapped
in a corset of pain.  But I will rise,
a Bird of Paradise.  I will enter your body
like a jolt of caffeine.  At last I have learned
that life is this way, and the rest is window-
dressing.  I will carve Viva la Vida
on this watermelon, like a tombstone.  I hope
the ending is joyful, and I hope I never return.

​​Barbara Crooker

This poem was first published in Barbara Crooker's book, More, C&R Press, 2010.

​Barbara Crooker is the author of eight books of poetry; Les Fauves is the most recent. Her work has appeared in many anthologies, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Commonwealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, The Poetry of Presence and Nasty Women: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse.  www.barbaracrooker.com