Carole Maso - Beauty is Convulsive - The Passion of Frida Kahlo

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.

But you are not there.

You are out painting. You are watching the eclipse. You are balancing fire. Arranging and rearranging. Outlining the shape of a woman and gently filling her in.

You are nailed by roses now and gently fastened by the girl to this extraordinary world.

You are in the midnight garden spooning earth,

devouring gorgeousness.

because I miss you with all my heart and my blood, Diego.

heart and blood solemn

feed me slowly tonight

filling my mouth

All the distance, earth diminishes between us

A door.

And she falls into dream. And in the dream she is free from her pain a little, though it is never far off — and she is walking down a dirt road.

And she is sucking the blood from her brushes, free. And she is looking in the mirror and she is painting the earth and she is sucking on the earth. And she stops to bring Diego his lunch and the white woman with the pen says, and the gringa yells Frida leave that fat man for awhile! And the gringa is sucking on a pen and writing this: You are walking — a dirt road — free of pain.

Easy for you to say, chueca. Easy for you … With your pale pornography of hope, your “dirt road alone,”your pretty ink-stained hands, your little poems in prose, your mouth, your thigh. A rage of perfect white.

I am touching the tip of your cervix — which is the earth. A plum. I am sifting, gorging, adoring your earth. As you paint your pain. Your lamentations, your incantations, your seductions in paint.

What do you know of pain? she asks. Biting into my neck. Forcing me into her burning, thomed corner. Torched: if you could feel what I feel … And we hold the pose.

Leather corsets. Plaster corsets. Steel. Let us descend into perfect earth, black earth, fertile, free. Carving roses. Put your hands all over me. Replenishing and torture. I penetrate the sex of the whole earth. Your brown, round, your dark tendrils, arrogant, gorgeous, bejeweled. Light. Bride tonight. And I am holding your furious world tonight. It’s so hard to let go, she says. I am holding the broken terra-cotta of your body at last. Don’t go. You laugh. A sugar skull dissolving. A rose beneath your tongue. And the world turns magenta as you come and we dream for a moment of something whole, no blood.

No blood.

No blood.

children of poverty.

No blood.

hurt of the earth

No blood.

all the assassinated friends

votive: devotion

Light tonight.

And she remembers — just a girl — opening

She draws a door. And her death opens. All is

River of light. And her father photographs her.… River of — sublime tonight.

She loves the sun clanging and she’s drawn.

Child tonight.

Lighting a small votive, she watches it float out on the river.