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Heat and light

And he takes out a crumpled piece of paper

and draws her skeleton of ash — before it crumbles

heart, heart

Not long after Frida died, Rivera’s granddaughter was baptized in the Coyoacán house. For the occasion, Diego dressed up a Judas figure, perhaps a skeleton, in Frida’s clothes, and a bag containing her ashes and her plaster corset was laid in a cradle.

Her ashes in a sack on top a plaster death mask and a rebozo wrapped, O Frida, Diego whispers, you are beautiful like that.

In the Frida Kahlo Museum beneath a protective glass ball is an assemblage of small objects — an equestrian cowboy on top of a skull, tin soldiers, dice, toy angels, all on pedestals.… A piece that was surely hers, a gift for Alejandro Gomez Arias, was a world globe that Frida covered with butterflies and flowers. In a later year when she was sick and unhappy, she asked for it back and covered the butterflies and flowers with red paint.…

no moon, sun, diamond, hands—

fingertip, dot, ray, gauze, sea.

pine green, pink glass, eye,

mine, eraser, mud, mother, I am coming.

= yellow love, fingers, useful

child, flower, wish, artifice, resin.

pasture, bismuth, saint, soup tureen.

segment, year, tin, another foal.

point, machine, stream, I am.

To love you very much with an M as in mundo or music.

Look at her work … ascetic and tender, hard as steel and fire and delicate as a butterfly’s wing, adorable as a beautiful smile and profound and cruel as life’s bitterness.

Diego, Diego

We are held together by smoke now

I know the way.

World Tonight

You are walking down a dirt road alone — free for a moment from the sorrow and drama of your life, free of your body’s pain — free of — free.…

You are walking without physical pain for a moment though it informs each step. Drawn to the swirling. A little free, a little free of — dragging a right foot.

While you have not forgotten it, for a moment, sucking on a paintbrush and looking up into the fiesta of the sun you see yourself walk away — walk out — out of your leather corset, your steel corset, your plaster corset, your corset of thorns and tears. Your abyss of dark birds. Diego, Diego.

I am sweeping the earth. I am soaking the earth with my tears. Dragging a right foot. Sorrow.

Brushing up, rubbing up slightly against her—I am sweeping the earth with my hair, with my grief.

All is failed — but the light is not failed. Walking away from your marriage which seems to be failing for a second time. One good leg.

You take her hand. She pulls on your necklace of swallows and thorns. You take her to the ditch at the end of the dirt road. You chew the earth at her door, screaming for her to come with you — down the dirt road — home. You take her hand and pull her with you, free. A little free. Free of—

You have come to the place of utter sorrow and coast as the end approaches. Smoke rising from the river.

As the end nears. You cradle a sugar skull.

And the small boats put up their white sails and your workers of the world unite once more.… See how the shoreline recedes and the boats and the dirt road you loved and walked no. And the roses. You are dragging her here to this — and your country soaked in blood and broken. Yes, you whirl in your communista, raising a fist and cigarette and swagger. Mouthing Trotsky, all your thorns and roses. Your country,

body gone to blood and broken. And you charm her with your fetish and image and promises and she watches as you suck on the edge of your corset. You swear into her ear as you lower her. You bisect in every possible way her body, in the ditch, laughing maniacally, left for dead, on the dirt road

home—

Without pain.

In pain in dread — you are devouring time and the earth and the woman — you are devouring women — in your bravado—

And the woman mud smeared all over her breathless points and gasps at the little deer pierced by arrows.

Laugh and cuss scrawl on her body with earth and blood you whisper: I hope the exit is joyful. And I hope never to come back.

hourglass

Because I am running out of legs, life.

Free. Free of.

She offers her palette like a heart. Paints fertile earth: green vines and leaves spring from her womb, her heart, while blood drips into veins that take root in the soil in front of her.

She nourishes the earth with her body, the woman with her body. She feeds the earth

fecund one. darling earthling.

soil, love.

She holds herself above her — lowers herself feeding folds and folds of fertile, gorgeous earth.

She smiles. You are sweet. And Diego too would like you. And she drags her down — rooted to the soil

stone spine

vagina fused to the throbbing earth

sunken

fucked.

The feminine earth. Lit by roses. Body of a woman, fire, future in your darkening theater. Proscenium of night. And you smile, mutter, not in any known language I am eating the earth. I need the earth in my mouth now. A rose opening. Chueca. Perfect one, unbroken.

Put it into my mouth now.

A tree grows inside you. I have seen it. Leaves sprout from your veins. Your blood nourishes the earth.

You drag your sexual entrails to this sacred place — drawn to the swirling — this final place of fury, desire — your tears are nails and paint — abyss of birds — ruined spine, leg.

No

No

Blood shall be shed.

One good leg

Kiss me. Again.

And she is furious, a fury flailing, screaming. Tortured — then replenished.

Hung upside down, naked, tied in an attempt to strengthen her spine.

And you are left in the end with all that pain cannot take from you.

Many nights she hung upside down from the bed’s canopy. The blood rushing to her head. While the women sat and whispered, prayed.

Pray:

Come to me now, down the dirt road, my little one — you remind me of a little girl I once knew at the Prepa (smooth and perfect) — before the accident.

And you sit laughing with all that pain cannot take.

And who could refuse you? Your dark dares

your outrageous, your flagrant

your stare

If I could carve with thorns Diego into you allegiance. Fidelity. Carve wild fidelity — my blood sport, my art — paint pulsing, paint flowing — beauty — beating like an injured thing. If I could carve my pain. Draw blood.

Look you say pointing to the little deer pierced by arrows. Its head of a saint. Its head of a cursing martyr. Its leather corset. A grief-induced hallucination. A sex-induced or pain-in- duced—Look there: the open fruit. The lacerated melons, pomegranates revealing their juices, juicy — just a little skin pulled back on that one. Pulpy, hurt and splayed.

She is arranging and rearranging her long black hair and earth. The trinkets in her hair. The arrangement on the dressing table. She looks at the woman in the mirror. Slowly applies paint. Radiant, radiate. Free. She stares and offers her the heart-shaped palette:

World tonight.

Men ascend double staircases looking for you.