by Carole Maso
asking God, one and one last — furious—answer me—one and only one last time—answer me.
papier — mache Judas Diego no.
And he breaks her heart again—
answer me and again.
And he wants her only to paint
don’t break, don’t go, stay
9 thorns in a cup
arms and glitter flung
imagine she dares — imagine — what lies under these
clothes, broken.
that pleasuring toward paradise
Diego
She applies paint to the skin of the canvas:
I penetrate the sex of the whole earth, its heat embraces me and in my body everything feels like the freshness of tender leaves…. At times your presence floats continuously as if wrapping all my being in the anxious wait for morning. And I notice that I am with you. In this moment still full of sensations, my hands are plunged in oranges, and my body feels surrounded by you.
My hands are sunk in oranges.
She remembers when her mouth — pressed to the ear — to the hum of the paint and the blood:
don’t kiss anyone else
magenta, dark green, yellow
And she watches him. Hair on fire, hair on firepaintnot my sister liar wild she paintsnot my sister wayward: live not you too Cristina
liar
wild life on fire
And she watches him betray her with her sister.
(red covers the page)
Running through the glade, the deer is pierced by
9 arrows
And she opens herself like a fruit to every man
And the women too. Oh yes you are beautiful and Diego
would approve
My fingertips touch your blood. She draws.
These are the vows you take.
votive: vision
the stitches do not close over
Crimson
Crimson
Crimson
Crimson like the blood that runs
when they kill a deer.
Pierced by 9 Cristinas why
And she paints — the dark paw draped over the shoulder, the small black eyes — there, there, tenderly, there now so tenderly the way color — the way color has always — the way paint the way—Eyes in the hands and a sense of touch in the eyes.
Diego
Kiss me love me a little longer — standing in front of this bit of miracle — this little piece of paradise, honesty, beauty, bliss, lucidity, she paints:
two butterflies in the braid, two flowers laid over the leaf green (sadness, science, the whole of Germany is this color) and the encroaching foliage — the eyebrows a hummingbird and around the neck — delicate drops of blood — the hummingbird hanging from thorns — on the shoulders the black monkey, the black cat, and the butterflies will be white and the flowers will be white, a little free and the white of the blouse — the crimson mouth — and the eyes are certain — and the eyes — both dead and alive — see far—
And it comes to her
And it comes to her in awe.
I cannot love Diego for what he is not.
Reunion
“… Diego still loses all the letters that reach his hands, and he leaves his papers everywhere … he gets very cross when one calls him for a meal, he pays compliments to all the pretty girls, and sometimes he makes an ant eye with some of the city girls who arrive unexpectedly, on the pretext of ’showing them’ his frescoes, he takes them for a day or two … to see the different landscapes…. for a change he no longer fights as he did before with the people who bother him when he is working, his fountain pens go dry, his clock stops and every fifteen days it has to be sent to be fixed, he keeps wearing those huge miner’s shoes (he has used the same ones for three years). He gets furious when he loses the keys of the car, and usually they appear in his own pocket, he never exercises and never sunbathes: he writes articles for newspapers that generally cause a terrific uproar, he defends the IV International with cloak and sword, and he is delighted that Trotsky is here….
These are more or less the main details.
… As you can observe, I have been painting — which is a lot to say, since I have spent my life loving Diego and being a good-for- nothing with respect to work, but now I continue loving Diego, and what’s more I have begun painting monkeys seriously.
… You can tell Boit that I am behaving very well in the sense that I do not drink as much cognac, tequila, etc. I consider this one more step forward toward the liberation of the … oppressed classes. I drank to drown my pain, but the damned pain learned how to swim….
O Mexico
And she closes her eyes onto a bed of nails, and she dies back a little and she watches an armada 11 ships 500 men 32 crossbows, and she watches from the distance the little conquistador Hemán Cortés grow slowly monstrous in her sight. The new Spain.
A comet with three heads hangs over the land.
A temple burns to the ground—
The Heart of the One World breaking open
magenta kisses
The new Spain they say.
The new Spain they say O Mexico!
La Uorona weeping for her dead children
La Malinche, La Chingada, the violated one—
She weeps.
All the violated ones.
See the tubes of fire, magical six-legged beasts O see
A world of betrayal, blood and ruin
As confirmed by the Aztec prophecy
And in her black pupil she holds her ancient world:
Aztec, Toltec, Mayan, Olmec — at her fetish altar
And she goes further — to the Chichimeca, dog people originated from the Place of Cranes — at her fetish altar — and then further — and she bites down
Fifty thousand years before. Until the end of the fourth ice age the indigenous people came across the Bering Strait. Venga, she smiles and waves.
Through the Demerol now she greets Tezcatlipoca, have a drink, the god of evil, embodiment of darkness, the smoking mirror. And Quetzalcoatl, his benevolent reflection, spirit bird, redeemer, winged eternity of wind, precious twin. Do you have a light? She holds the double burning bird in her mirrored eye. Dark and light. 2 Fridas, one who is whole and one who is broken. Not the leg.
She watches Quetzalcoatl on his doomed path now. Drinking deeply from the cup, who has tasted such sweetness? until he loses all memory, then self, then—
and when his lovely sister enters
and when his lovely sister enters the bedchamber
he succumbs and succumbs and succumbs again.
Ashamed he knows he cannot stay and builds a raft of snakes. Goodbye. She hears him say in the Year of One Reed I shall return one day.
Each year the solar calendar leaves five empty days. Days of waiting. Days in vain. The Toltecs wait. The Aztecs wait. Thousands of years are passing without a sign of him. Frida laughs. Look, now, on the horizon, is it you, can it really be you returned? It’s you she cackles drugged and babbling. In a year of One Reed: 1519.
Lord Quetzalcoatl, Moctezuma bows to him. Beloved one. How long we’ve waited. But it is the one deranged by gold-lust who takes his hand.
Carrying tubes of fire, the six-legged beast comes, carrying smallpox, sorrow.
Cortés.
And where there were once villages of mud and clay, flying buttresses. At the heart of the One World all the temples, pyramids destroyed. She closes her eyes to the ruins still.
Now flying buttresses.
The arrogance of their touch.
The Spanish army had so overloaded their horses with gold and treasure that hundreds were drowned as they crossed Lake Texcoco.
The arrogance of their touch — Ferdinand, Isabella, Santa Anna, Cortes. Blood and blood and greed and ruin.
And the French.
My dog people: heart, heart. The hundred lamentations. Father Hildago dreaming liberation …
All the tyrants loss and blood and sorrow. C
inco de Mayo.Napoleon. Porfirio Diaz.
And Frida, “daughter of la raza,” sings a revolution song.
Drinking tequila like a real mariachi. 1913.
Tonight I will get drunk
Child of my heart
Tomorrow is another day
And you will see that I am right.
The sun clanging.
She breathes on the glass. She draws an O
She dreams, and dies a little
Mexico!
Votive: Devotion
… No words can describe Diego’s immense tenderness toward the things that possess beauty, his affection for beings who do not have anything to do with the current classless society, or his respect for those oppressed by it. He especially cares about the Indians to whom he is linked by blood; he loves them dearly because of their elegance, beauty and for being the living flower of the cultural tradition of America. He loves children, all animals — especially bold Mexican dogs — birds, plants and rocks. He loves all beings without being docile or neutral. He is very affectionate but he never gives himself completely; for this reason, and because he hardly has time to dedicate to personal relations, they call him ungrateful. He is respectful and refined.…
… He is not sentimental but he is intensely emotional and passionate. Inertia exasperates him because he is a continued, live and potent flow. Because of his extraordinary good taste, he appreciates all that contains beauty, be it a woman or a mountain.… Like the cacti of his land, he grows strong and amazing either in sand or on rocks; he blossoms in a lively red, the most transparent white, and sunlike yellow. Covered by thorns, he protects his tenderness inside. He lives with his strong sap in a ferocious environment. He shines alone like a sun avenging the gray color of rocks. His roots go beyond the anguish of solitude and sadness and of all the frailties that dominate other beings. He stands up with amazing power, then blossoms and bears fruit like no other plant.
(And when she is sick he will distract her by dancing around the bed with a tambourine pretending to be a bear.)
Disintegration
Awakening on black slap
Awakening on black slap paint (no new pain though, take.
Take
Take what?
the pigeon made mistakes
toe by toe by toe — take
night
votive: courage
not the leg
the blackened toes — then take
night is falling.
black not the leg
black black toes
black
night is falling in my life. not the leg
Ringing
the amputation 3 free let me—
let me
3 7 9 live
Did the bells not mean she might be saved might—not the leg—be saved
Take the toes then
Bargaining in someone’s religion — a made-up thing
3 7 9
the little girl’s stash of butterflies, marbles, paints, charms
these are the games she—not the leg not the—
these are the games let’s play awhile
chattering, counting, babbling
while she drags out her headless dolls her perverse tell all her bartering her not the leg—and the paintings—
pain arranged laid bare
poised like that
look, look
Frida what?
Frida what is it?
Over there.
drawn to the vision
her head in a sunflower — engulfed by that flame. Her head.
Frida.
she wiggles her—
toes, toes then take
adiós, mi amigos, adiós
not the leg.
Dr. Farill recommended that her foot be amputated, leaving only the heel.
Dr. Glusker brought a Doctor Puig, a Catalán bone surgeon educated in the U.S.
her lucky numbers are—
adiós
begging
she’ll be begging—
not the leg.
in pieces
take all the toes at once.
anything but—
You know Frida that I think it is useless to just cut your toes … because of the gangrene.
I think Frida, the moment has come when it would be better to
not the — not the — not the
cut off your leg.
not old not over not ready to go
You know Frida that I think that it is useless.
you stole from me fourteen beds, fourteen machine guns and fourteen of everything. He only left me his pen, he even stole the lamp, he stole everything.
Blood in the corner now saturating the page.
Covered in gold where does your life
A metal rod through the pelvis
But not the leg
You know Frida that I think it is—
Cracked pelvis — useless — you know—
Not the leg
You know Frida
Points of support
On my whole body there is only one; and I want two. In order to have two they have to cut one. It is the one that I do not have that I have to have in order to be able to walk, the other will already be dead!
Raquel Tibol:
Irritated by the vital energy that radiated from an object that she had created, an energy that she, in her own movements, no longer possessed, she took a knife made in Michoacan which had a straight and cutting edge, and overcoming the lassitude produced by her nocturnal injections, with tears in her eyes, and a convulsive grin on her tremulous lips, she began to scratch the painting slowly, too slowly. The noise of steel against very dry oil paint grew like a lament in the morning in this space of Coyoacan where she had been born.… She scratched, annihilating, destroying herself; it was her sacrifice and her expiation.
Your tears are nails
the pigeon made mistakes
it made mistakes.
Instead of going North it went South
It thought the wheat was water
It made mistakes.
not the leg
the sun and the moon out together indicating the sorrow of all creation
her head is fire
one stiff, paper-doll-like arm. The central Frida is armless. One bandaged foot …
not old, not over, not ready to go.
the leg
In the night the bone men come and in the day.
enclosed in a steel corset for eight months.
the leg
Like a lament in the morning.
Dr. Eloesser mentions that Frida had been painting up to three months prior to his visit, that she has headaches, and that for a period of time she had had a continuous fever. Her leg, he said, was in constant pain. The rest is illegible except for the word “gangrene.”
Votive: oblivion. She swerves.
Leaves. Blades, cupboards, sparrow
I sell it all for nothing. I do not believe
in illusion. You smoke terrible.
smoke. Marx. life, the great
joker, nothing has a name.
I don’t look at shapes, the paper
love. wars, tangled hair, pitchers.
claws, submerged spiders, lives
in alcohol, children are the days and
here it is stopped.
Her sister Matilde:
They fused three vertebrae with a bone of I don’t know who and the first eleven days were something terrifying for her.
They gave her Chloromycetin every four hours and her temperature began to drop a little but that’s the way it has been since the 4th of April when they operated for a second time and now the corset is dirty as a pigsty since she is secreting through her bag, it smells like a dead dog and these señores say that the wound is not closing and the poor child is their victim.
the desperately festive falling apart Frida
All dressed up with nowhere to go
I sell everything for nothing.�
� I do not believe in illusion … the great vacillator. Nothing has a name. I do not look at forms … drowned spiders. Lives in alcohol. Children are the days and here is where I end.
your head is flowers, your body the body of a deer, pierced
Without Hope, she scrapes, it is coming
4 black toes
it is coming
Votive: Sorrow Mirror of Night
3, 7 and 9 are your lucky numbers. You put them in a glittering box. You add a pink ribbon, a drawing, a lock of hair. Black feather. You are no fool. The end is nearing. You draw a right foot, right foot, a right foot.
You return now to the women. In the calm violence of your being, desire. You draw a right foot as you drag yourself across the page to this final place.
Your tears are nails. You hold them in your mouth. Your last Calvary. Sorrow.
And hear now the women praying their dark rosary — the tone of the cross, 10 our fathers, 10 hail Marys, the drag and hum of the cross. The wound of the cross. Salt.
A paper halo once — a child’s cutout falling useless to the floor. See how she suffers. A halo of paper and pins to keep the disintegrated shoulder bone intact. Visiting the woman held together by paper and pins. What do you know of suffering? she asks. And she is right. Paper dolls holding hands. Good-bye.
You clutch your fetus in a bottle laughing snidely. So sweet, so angry, so nasty. Formaldehyde. You are no fool. Singing Mexican drinking songs. Your country gone to broken blood and roses. Forcing the head. Fuck. Your hands arranging flowers in the dark. You finger your pendants, charms. Laughing. Imagine fingering — you see—
Forcing the ludicrous death head between your breasts — a sugar skull
Dancing last things, imagine fingering you draw with speed slap paint.
Picture roses awful thorns departures sworn last flowing free The V
of Viva a dipping up and down and—
Shatter let me shatter along with you a little
the plaster cracking
A little free.
In the upper register a frieze of androgynous profiles shedding tears.
From the operating theater looking up you hear voices dying away in the garden. Voices are whispering and you are dying in their formal arrangements of posthumous appraisals — their raves, their dismissals. Most artists lead unhappy lives, but only one has ever achieved cult status by making her unhappy face the main subject of her work. Frida Kahlo’s specialty was suffering, and she adopted it as an artistic theme as confidently as Mondrian claimed the rectangle or Rubens the corpulent nude. The majority of her paintings are self-portraits. If you’ve seen just one you can guess what awaits you in the others: a dark-haired woman with large eyes, a single run-on eyebrow and an expression any tragic heroine would envy. Leg falling. Leg breaking. In the agreement. In the consensus, the condescension. Those plaster pedestals. Leave me be.