Barbara Crooker

FRIDA KAHLO SPEAKS:*

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 round my throat.
But I did it for myself. I painted 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 this 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.

*First published in Natural Bridge.

Barbara Crooker is the author of three books of poetry, Radiance, which won the Word Press First Book Award and was a finalist for The Paterson Poetry Prize, Line Dance, which won the Paterson Award for Literary Excellence, and More (C&R Press, 2010) She is the recipient of three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships in Literature, the 2003 Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, the 2004 WB Yeats Society Prize, and the 2006 Rosebud Ekphrastic Poetry Award.