the most surprising thing about your living room

is not the zizi plant, lush succulent, groping up the window over-

looking the side lawn, or the fountain of the night-blooming cereus,

her generous winged stems and her stingy flower :: is not the b&w

photograph of james baldwin shrouded in simple white as if he

knew he’d finally find africa on the other side of the grave :: not

the silver-and-red-framed mirror hung to hide the ivory bas-relief

of seventies-style grecophilia stuck fast in the brick above the mantel

nor the color-blocked rug angling out from the sofa’s feet toward

the chair and ottoman’s sleek lines :: is not the kittens chittering

at birds and insects just outside their reach, pacing the long window

seat in curbed pursuit of their prey :: is not the ladder-and-plank

bookshelves, their raw wood, the candles and carvings nooked

between sharp stacks of journals and magazines, art catalogues

and dvds :: not its length or nearly all-day light, its reading lamp

or roll-top desk back in the far corner :: but the ultimate emptiness of it,

this rich room so spacious it’s equipped with a horizon, which you

neglect in favor of your dark, book-padded cell of a study, where

you’ve got a stool on wheels, papers spread like unraked leaves

across every flat space, and your laptop’s glow—all you need.

riven
—after frida kahlo’s broken column

i shift against the leather of my desk chair,
aware my back is off, awry, against me
and the daily devotion i show to keyboard
and screen. my back makes its position
clear. deep breathing discovers a depression—
in my mental image of this fickle body—
right where my spine begins to dip, drains
it out only for pain’s bitter juice to flood
back in again. how much relief did frida
kahlo imagine she’d find in giving a brace
responsibility for her back? how much did
she let herself taste? when does clamping
down hard against certain unrelenting aches
begin to numb the senses indiscriminately?

my back tells me kahlo tacked her self-
portrait to canvas with oil to give herself
nerve, nerves. no mirror, this painting reflects
what occupies her innards, what rives her
so raggedly from chin to coccyx. she could
never bear—has forgotten how—to look
as ripped apart as she feels, cannot afford
feeling. only with her artist’s brush can she
bead her face pearly and be open to flowing.
only that tool reveals her most distinct feature
to be wings. she would fly the waste land
where her pain lives, if she weren’t a pillar
of civilization, weighted to earth by marble
gray, sculpted, no less heavy for all its cracks.