Their criticisms, gossip, recriminations
in the demeaning, in the mean-spirited
“Unregenerate junkie,” apply layers of disdain, “nymphomaniac, suicidal, alcoholic, self-dramatizing, narcissist” Easy for you to say
And she is dying posthumously one more time in their scorn … martyr bordered, la misericorda.
Papa!
holding the yellow flower that the Aztecs associated with death and that decorate graves all over Mexico.
Her magic numbers, talismans — to ward off any more
the internal lyrical motives that impelled her
All the things she loved
her characteristic small slow affectionate strokes
Diego
She paints on the smoothness of metal — touch, touch and gently with her meticulous brush
the skin of the fruit, tree, rock, stream
I feel you
all is alive I feel you
the miracle of her touch with paint
her pain in paint
Heart, uterus, breasts, spine
longing, longing, she paints
intestines — the valves up close
blood through
trembling
smallest of brushes like eyelashes on skin
she trembles
every hair stands up
painting fur
the tenderness of her touch
a parrot, a small dog
skin of water, fruit, birds
softness — the velvet curtain
the folds of dress
one foot in oblivion—
love me a little
and she feels with her eyes the water all over her
and she paints, the flatness of rock, the texture of feather and tree
the exposed heart
roots, veins
If you could feel what I feel.
Drops of mother’s milk, drops of blood, the weeping fruit
She feels in her the motion
And I am painting the skin of my body—
my pain
with a small brush
something so dear
with reverence.
a touch like no other
There is no artist in Mexico that can compare with her, he says.
The blood pumping of the heart, the severed valves, hurt, love. Your blood flows up into the distant mountains and down into the sea, chasm, the red delta, red river, fluid, brutal poetry of blood and broken
green: warm and good light
cobalt blue: electricity and purity. Love
she feels in her the joy, the yellow pulsing mystery madness
She feels in her the music, voices, pictures, sings.
drawn to the swirling
vibrant, magnetic, Diego, the way color
pulses—
the way—
color comes and goes
She feels in her the alegría
She would become happy in front of any beautiful thing.
the way color keeps
the way color has always kept
drawn to the swirling
the way the line redeems
consoles sometimes.
the way — broken
impassive, furious, anguished—
the torso split paint
without flinching
steel corset
breaking apart
Diego why?
ionic column
answer me.
a pair of legs severed from their body and between them a pair of lips.
a blood red ribbon circling her neck now Diego don’t go.
Diego
Love me a little I adore you
the way the ribbon connects—
blood of Mexico
— transcends
because I loved you, wanted you.
promiscuous one,
a monkey tail encircles her neck
and lust is just another adornment (thorn necklace,
hummingbird)
a way of getting there
The monkey Frida naked, laughing. Fulang Chang! she cries, she paints.
Votive: devotion
egg, pagan, emblem of creation she paints
you are rejuvenation, you are spring and resurrection, sanctity of blood, beating wings as your teeth
As your teeth sink into him and you swear yourself once more into being.
turbulence of earth, puberty and you are back once more at the Preparatoria before, before …
Accident:
ferocious child of light
the broken eggs, maimed dolls, the figure blindfolded, the torn bridal canopy
And she smiles and she utters unearthly things and she utters not in any known language, in stars and pain, pulque she says I am devouring time and the earth
put it in my eyes now
votive: vision
ACCIDENT
I am not sick. I am broken.
I am happy as long as I can paint.
Survivor
Between the Curtains (Self-Portrait Dedicated to Trotsky)
Fulang Chang and Myself
The Square Is Theirs (Four Inhabitants of Mexico)
I With My Nurse
They Ask for Planes and Only Get Straw Wings
I Belong to My Owner
My Family (My Grandparents, My Parents and I)
The Heart (Memory)
My Dress Hangs There
What the Water Gave Me
Ixcuintle Dog with Me
Pitahayas
Tunas
Food From the Earth
Remembrance of an Open Wound
The Lost Desire (Henry Ford Hospital)
Birth
Dressed Up for Paradise
She Plays Alone
Passionately in Love
Burbank — American Fruit Maker
Xochitl
The Frame
Eye
Survivor
ACCIDENT
I have a cat’s luck since I do not
die so easily and that’s always something.
Accident
Written by Dr. Henriette Begun in 1946
1926: Accident causes fracture of third and fourth lumbar vertebrae, three fractures of pelvis, eleven fractures of right foot, dislocation of left elbow, penetrating abdominal wound caused by iron handrail entering left hip, exiting through vagina and tearing left lip. Acute peritonitis. Cystitis with catheterization for many days. Three months bed rest at Red Cross hospital. Spinal fracture not recognized by doctors until Dr. Ortiz Tirado ordered immobilization with plaster corset for nine months. After three or four months of corset patient suddenly felt entire right side “as if asleep” for hour or more, this phenomenon giving way with injections and massage; symptoms not repeated. At removal of corset patient resumed “normal” life, but from then on has had sensation of constant fatigue and at times pain in backbone and right leg, which now never leave her.
1929: Marriage. Normal sex life. Pregnancy in first year of marriage. Abortion because of malformed pelvis. Wasserman and Kahn (W&K) tests negative. Constant fatigue and weight loss.
1931: In San Francisco, California, examined by Dr. Leo Eloesser. Given several tests, W&K among them, these resulting slightly positive. Two months treatment without a cure. No analysis of spinal fluid. In these days pain in right foot worse, atrophy up to thigh in right leg increases considerably, tendons of 2 toes in right foot retracted, making normal walking extremely difficult. Dr. Eloesser diagnoses congenital deformity of the backbone. X-rays show considerable scoliosis and apparent fusion of third and fourth lumbar vertebrae with disappearance of invertebrate meniscus. Small trophic ulcer appears on right foot.
1932: In Detroit, Michigan, attended by Dr. Pratt of Henry Ford Hospital for second pregnancy (four months) with spontaneous abortion despite bed rest and various treatments. Trophic ulcer continues to worsen.
1934: Third pregnancy. At three months abortion performed by
Dr. Zollinger in Mexico. Exploratory laparotomy showed undeveloped ovaries. Appendectomy. First operation on right foot: excision of five phalanges. Extremely slow healing.
1935: Second operation on right foot, finding several sesamoids. Healing equally slow. Lasts nearly six months.
1936: Third operation on right foot. From that time on: extreme nervousness, fatigue in backbone with alternating periods of improvement.
1938: Consults specialists in bones, nerves and skin in New York. Dr. Glusker succeeds in healing trophic
ulcer with electrical and other treatments.
1939: Paris, France. Renal colobacteriosis with high fever. Continued backbone fatigue. Ingests great quantities of alcohol. At the end of this year has acute pain in backbone. Attended in Mexico by Dr. Farill, who orders absolute bed rest with twenty kilogram weight to stretch spine. Several specialists visit and all advise Albee operation: Dr. Albee himself advises same by letter. Dr. Marin and Eloesser oppose this. Fungus infection appears on fingers of right hand.
1940: Moves to San Francisco, California. Treated by Dr. Eloesser: absolute rest, very nutritious food, no alcohol, electrotherapy, calcium therapy. Slightly better, again lives more or less normal life.
1941: Again experiences exhaustion, with continuous weakness in back, violent pain in extremities. Weight loss, debility, menstrual irregularity.
1944: These years show significant increase in tiredness, backbone and right-leg pain. Seen by Dr. Zimbron, who orders absolute bed rest, steel corset which at first makes for more comfort but without stopping pain. When corset occasionally removed, feels lack of support as though unable to support herself. Complete lack of appetite continues with rapid weight loss. Weakness, nausea; ordered to bed, evening fever. Patient’s state continues worsening. Dr. Zimbron repeats analysis and x-ray, lumbar tap with lipoidal injection (third time). Reaches conclusion that she should be given a laminectomy and spinal graft. Eye examination shows papillary hypoplasia.
1945: Again made to wear plaster corset. Can be stood for only a few days because of intense pain in backbone and leg. In the three cerebrospinal taps there were lipoidal injections which were not eliminated: caused higher than normal cranial tension, continued pain in back of neck and spinal column, generally dull but stronger during nervous excitement. General state: exhaustion.
1946: Dr. Glusker advises patient to go to New York to see Dr. Philip Wilson, surgeon specializing in spinal operations. Leaves for New York in May. Carefully examined by Dr. Wilson and neurology specialists who consider spinal fusion necessary and urgent. Performed by Dr. Wilson in June this year. Four lumbar vertebrae fused with pelvis graft and fifteen-centimeter long vitalium plate; bed rest for three months. Patient recovers. Advised to wear special steel corset for eight months, lead calm, restful life. Obvious improvement noted for first three months after operation, after which patient cannot follow Dr. Wilson’s orders. Then not convalescing in due form, life filled with nervous agitation, little rest. Feels same fatigue as before, aching neck and backbone, debility, weight loss. Macrocytic anemia. Fungus again appears on right hand.
ACCIDENT
Nevertheless I have the will to do many things
and I have never felt “disappointed by life”
as in Russian novels.
The Hours Were Broken Divorce
“the stitches do not heal over and the wound does not look as if it is closing.”
Cut your hair and watch it fall. Into a circle, desolation. The hair, retaliation rage, wear a man’s suit your tears are nails, and a lock of hair is falling, falling, between your legs the scissors resting there, the hair which he adored.
Let the scissors enter the body. Let the two Fridas, hair everywhere, hair everywhere liar, liar, why hair in the rungs of the—yellow for madness or sickness or fear—
the yellow chair … Outside severed rest there.
And she paints in rage and sorrow fury. And she paints some say the greatest of her paintings Diego Diego
House for birds
Nests for love
All for nothing
I sell it all for nothing
Cropped Hair
Now that you don’t love me—
divorce — the legs dancing away from the rest of the body.
She watched other people dance.
There’s no escaping the monkey’s paw thorny barbaric yawl
her heart is a fountain its severed valves pump misericorda
the lacerated Mexican saint,
all the martyred ones.
What the water gave you finally
What the pain
You so far over there now paint. The table is wounded. Its legs flayed maimed paint. See how Judas’s chest and right foot are bleeding: and the skeleton has a broken right foot. Over, broken utterly alone, and she paints her death in lavender and the plants that will sprout on her grave. And that skeleton there grinning on the canopy of her bed.
votive: oblivion
Diego, Diego
Ven.
Come to me
Bride tonight
She paints herself, friends, companions, nieces, pets. Desperate no children Diego no, not that anything but she paints: on that desolate soulscape—
The blood red ribbon uniting her and the paint and the pain
and the world in which
She is walking down a dirt road alone
Diego
the heart
the lock
cut look if I loved you it was for your hair
ring
crow feather swallow
the fetus floating in a bottle
The lock of hair, the ring, the song, the hope (, mother) put it
in a box,
the love we had the dreams the child.
one side and the other
the ether rising, the smell of formaldehyde
the locket Diego
now that your hair is cropped short I do not love you anymore
the heart — extract it
the pain, isolate it
when it gets too much
Cristina
when it gets too much
the ribbons from her hair
the dreaming head
fevered
put the dream in the box put the fever, put the—other people dance—sorrow put the talons—Bonito—
in another place.
the image.
And the one you adored
put the crimson in the white box
sparrows in a jar
put the tears put the river Papa
put the hurt on one side and the corset (Cristina why?)
the gradual falling apart.
put the empty clothing
because I wanted
you here your dress over there.
Diego don’t go
Black in the gaps between leaves shows that the time is night which to Frida meant the end of life
Diego
And you break into two Fridas — one the Frida whom Diego loves and the other the Frida Diego no longer loves.
Rupture Forceps Incision
the motive, Diego, was always you, and if the pain might be relieved, a little. And to keep you. And the knife, and the sweet suture, oh it will feel like being alive or—
the autoeroticism of her wounds
the thing that impels patients to want surgery, love me, love me my frog-prince,
don’t go out that door
— open me
And I want desperately …
open me up
What do you want desperately?
Don’t go out that door.
The hours were broken
libidinous she gives herself freely now she takes
Silky and yellow yellow for illness and madness the way that hair might have felt, her hair in your hands, like a real gringa
the succulent root
&
nbsp; Diego
Don’t go.
Hair on fire candle table shirt ablaze—
Diego gone again Maria Felix on fire—stay
In the sound of the clock as he moves away
frieze:
A line of Diego heads — A row of Diegos — frieze—
don’t go.
the Judas of your touch
we are held together by tears
Numbers, the economy
the farce of words
nerves are blue.
I don’t know why — also red,
but full of color.
Diego, Diego
We are held together by arrows now.
~ ~ ~
martyrdom of glass. the great nonsense
Votive: Oblivion
votive: Diego are the vows you take
9 arrows
votive: oblivion to kill the pain
In the sound of the clock, in the pulse of the light,
Diego, Diego.
In the violence, in the calm Diego, Diego,
my child, my light.
A childish thing.
Child of the people
Child of the revolution
Child of brilliance (standing on a scaffold)
But always a child.
Frog kingdom prince.
Mirror of night.
Child of the great occultist
Child of cruelty
Her bridled, brotheled humor
love Diego
and love Diego
demented
covered in gold a metal rod through her pelvis
and love Diego is just another
maiming thing
another kind of injury
transforming thing.
Accident:
the landscape is day and night.
And she remembers when her mouth …
She lures men up double staircases to her lair—
as he breaks her heart again Diego just to keep up.
Her library of lovers, her Noguchi, her Trotsky, Diego, Diego.
Her viva Sandino, her viva Zapata, Diego, Diego
for you
All the assassinated ones. And that cinema of poverty.
Singing drunken patriotic songs all night
the theater of their lives.
Diego who never entirely leaves her body
a maiming thing
mountainous thing
passion retablo
Accident:
imagine a red plea in the bright light