if only
alegría
I would have given you.
Because I wanted you come to me
the cupped butterfly, painted black.
The city and bay are overwhelming. What is especially fantastic is Chinatown. The Chinese are immensely pleasant and never in my life have I seen such beautiful children as the Chinese ones. Yes, they are really extraordinary. I would love to steal one so that you could see for yourself.
The central Frida is armless
the useless umbilicus
darling one: small votive, flickering in the dark—
I weep flowers, I weep song, I bleed
the ballerina was broken
the mute blue testimony. She sits at the end of the bed smoking utterly alone. Beside her a grinning doll — together on a child’s bed. Misery without end.
My painting carries within it the message of pain…. Painting completed my life. I lost three children…. Paintings substituted for all of this. I believe that work is the best thing.
votive: faith
You paint the dead baby, all dressed up with nowhere to go. Poor child, poor Frida. Feet first, the soles of his feet facing us — the milky eyes, the dribble of blood, Christ flagellated on his pillow — poor tiny loser, impossible, the never to be, poor thing. Holding a last gladiola. Dressed up for Paradise.
Begging Dr. Eloesser for a fetus in formaldehyde. Because I wanted—
House for birds
Nest for love
The only thing I bought here were two old-fashioned dolls, very beautiful ones. One is blonde with blue eyes, the most wonderful eyes you can imagine. She is dressed as a bride…. Both are lovely, even with their heads a little bit loose. Perhaps that is what gives them so much tenderness and charm. For years I wanted to have a doll like that, because someone broke one that I had when I was a child, and I couldn’t find it again. So I am very happy having two now. I have a little bed in Mexico, which will be marvelous for the bigger one. Think of two nice Hungarian names to baptize them.
The women pray
Accident: 10 Our Fathers, 10 Hail Marys, 3 Glory Bes.
The limping lacerated Mexican saint
She watched other people’s children. Because it was not to be.
Pray for us sinners.
The useless petitions
3 Not to Be’s
black umbilicus
paint
an umbilical cord emerges from the placenta — the large red
vein paint
paint
even the moon is weeping
paint
heartbreak all the bleeding children
ACCIDENT
The doll asleep in the lacquered box.
ACCIDENT
¡Que venga: la bailarina! ¡La bailarina!
The dancing disembodied torso.
Because I wanted you (O Mexico)
On the cracked earth — against mountains — an agitated Mexican sky, her prickly pears — states of ripeness, states of fecund — split, delicious, splotches of blood
O Mexico
She cradles a sugar skull and croons
Tonight I will get drunk
Child of my heart
Tomorrow is another day
And you will see that I am right….
And at the Salón México, Frida watching with pleasure the women dancing. The little flask of cognac she carried. Her coctelitos
fuck. love.
cradling a sugar skull—
drawn to the swirling she draws
Muertes en Relajo. Yes, the dead having a fling. Blood mutilation and sacrifice, give the dead a little life. The gringos are so glum!
dance, dance!
leaving a foot at the fetish altar.
She laughs
O you are broken
drinking tequila
One cigarette after another
A little song at the people’s altar: The revolution is harmony of form and of color and everything that exists and moves….
Frida and Diego would amuse themselves by drawing cadavres exquis or singing corridos. Although Diego couldn’t carry a tune, he loved to sing, and he took pleasure in listening to Frida, for she sang with great spirit and could handle the falsetto breaks in songs like “La Malagueña” beautifully.
O beauty Mexico convulsive
I am the flower, I am the feather, I am the drum and the mirror of the gods. I am the song. I rain flowers. I rain songs.
I am the flower. I weep songs. I weep paint.
the parrot Bonito outside drinking tequila and beer and squawking I can’t — I can’t get over this hangover ¡No se me pasa la cruda!
swearing
the alegría girl with glee
a little dog howling
the alegría girl on fire
Accident: dance! dance! A pair of red legs severed from their body and between them a pair of lips.
her theater of the ferocious and absurd
her love of the circus, boxing matches, movies, street theater
And she sings in the glade
I am a poor little deer that lives in the mountains.
Since I am not very tame, I don’t come down to drink water during the day.
At night little by little, I come to your arms, my love.
Accident:
Everybody tells me not to lose patience, but they don’t know what being bedridden for three months means to me … after having been a real street wanderer all my life. But what can one do? At least la pelona did not take me away.
Everywhere skeletons hanging from the ceilings and walls and furniture. Big skeletons clothed in popular dress and little skeletons in all corners of the bed
arrangements of jewels, glass balls, embroidered costumes, bells, feathers
and skeletons dancing
la pelona dancing
layers of petticoats the hems embroidered by Frida with ribald Mexican sayings
Her Tehuana dress
hair decorated bows clips combs bougainvillea blossoms
an embroidered blouse and long skirt with a ruffle of cotton on the hem
long necklaces of gold coins
elaborate headdresses with starched lace pleats
and jewelry — glass beads, pre-Colombian jade, colonial pendant earrings
the elaborate stage of you
She raises a ringed hand
I am only one cell of the complex revolutionary mechanism of the people for peace and of the new Soviet-Chinese-Czechoslovakian-Polish people who are bound by blood to my own person and to the indigenous peoples of Mexico. Amongst these large multitudes of Asiatic peoples there will always be my own faces — Mexican faces — of dark skin and beautiful form, limitless elegance, also the blacks will be liberated, they are so beautiful and so brave …
and she paints.
Accident: Alejandro
“The electric train with two cars approached the bus slowly. It hit the bus in the middle. Slowly the train pushed the bus. The bus had a strange elasticity. It bent more and more, but for a time it did not break. It was a bus with long benches on either side. I remember that at one moment my knees touched the knees of the person sitting opposite me, I was sitting next to Frida. When the bus reached its maximal flexibility it burst into a thousand pieces, and the train kept moving. It ran over many people.