about the website

These poems have been conposed in response to the powerful art of Frida Kahlo.

Originally in a chapbook, published by Imp Press, 2004,

I always felt frustrated because of the prohibitive
cost of including colour prints.
Her art speaks to me both as a poet and as one
living with the most faithful of companions - Pain.
As Kahlo demonstrates so vividly, Pain keeps us
on the razor's edge between desperation and inspiration.

- hortensia anderson

Viva La Vida, 1954

am i not
here -

in the words, in the juice
of a ripe watermelon

carved
in the jade rind and rose pulp
that is my life -

a tourmaline bouquet
crystallising on canvas
in a perpetual "now"

before the first sweetness
has rotted away,
after the brush sweeps
my last sticky stroke

how many more fruit
will have sprung
from this painting's
own slippery seeds?

hortensia anderson

Tree of Hope, 1946

the garden of eden has cracked,

the grass is parched, yellowing

beneath the sun

~

and the moon - she

can't give rain, only shadow.

~

yet on this, volcanic rock,

pain in the paint grows hope -

the "t" that is left, the cross i bear

and how!

~

death has danced away

from fear in the face of life -

my love - take the red of my cuts

and feed the sun while by the

moon, my tides swing and sway

in the Tehuana-clad rhythms

~

of countless surgeries.

hortensia anderson

Without Hope, 1945

Aztec, Incan, Mayan
i sacrificed myself -
threw down the gauntlet
of health
and took up my brushes, my
paints, and let me tell you -
i made history!

i drank my own gore
until i tasted death
sweet as the sugar crystal skull
with my name on it

wrapped in a coverlet
of microbe flowers,
entrails funnelling in and out
of my throat.

Listen kid -
i may not get out alive
but in the last blast
of the furnace

they will remember me -
a flame rose

rising
into immortality.

hortensia anderson

The Broken Column, 1944

how can
her heavenly body
belong on the barren
plain against the plain
blue heavens.

nothing remains of her
to make love with:

a vagina in ruins,
held in the folds
of her chlamys gown

pain like lovers
ripped through her cherry

the dripped juice
a red spreading stain
across her canvas.

hortensia anderson

Roots, 1943

mother
earth and sky
lie
bleached -- the whiteness
is my dying.

give me colour!

i lie across a chasm
a mexican queen
the blood red fire in my
windowed belly
turned emerald green

lush vines
watered by tears

they have taken root
inside me, rooted me to
my country
my dying country
my dying

ah but the jungle cannot help
running wild

soon, the baby goats
will feed on me,
my kudzu leaves;
and
my black eyebrow
will spread her birdwing


flying.

hortensia anderson

The Dream, 1940

my twin my metal
bones and twisted wires
recline on the canopy
above me

a sugar saint lies

dreaming of dreaming

in my dreams

i am the picture
of health i can't stop

the green ivy from
growing going

over and under
my yellow coverlet
and i a small sleeper

but with
a death
larger than life.

hortensia anderson

My Nurse and I, 1937

black madrina,
black madonna

your breast overflows
with sweet white milk flowers,
with white leaf and rain.

wet nurse, nursing -
your mask, my face
held in your lap
dark suckling woman

dripping love
on the pale lace of an infant's
christening gown.

hortensia anderson

My Birth, 1932

a woman in child-
birth has her own pain

effaced
by a white sheet,
her legs are spread

head emerging
from merging,
black hair
from black hair

in just
enough blood
on these white sheets
to taint
her own beginning.

hortensia anderson