Here is a poem for Frida Kahlo's birthday, from What the Water Gave Me – Poems after Frida Kahlo. 'Flower of Life', like all the poems in my book, has the title of one of her paintings. The Mexican mandrake is a cactus flower and through it Kahlo seems to both celebrate the life force and mourn her inability to have children.
Flower of Life
I flip the love plant
upside-down, release a starburst
of stamens and stigma –
insecticide yellow
to ward off scorpions
from our marriage bed.
And around the ruby mandragora
I let the rosette of leaves
bare their petticoats –
the business of what’s inside
and under the fireworks.
Is that an embryo’s fontanelles
in the petalled womb
or Diego’s fountain-flower?
It isn’t roots someone’s pulled
shrieking out of the ground,
but my torn fallopian tubes.
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