Self Portrait In The Bath
After Frida Kahlo
There is no washing away of the self.
The self follows wherever I go.
The continuous chatter of monkey mind.
Images float on the water.
Do you remember when?
You were there. And you.
Inescapable.
Bubbles, always bubbles, pop like thoughts.
My feet poke out of the water and reflect themselves on its surface. Twenty toes.
The heat leeches the ache from my back.
The air leeches the heat from the water.
My cat sniffs the water suspiciously.
Still, I linger. My foreign flesh prunes.
I don’t know what I’m waiting for.
Something.
Something good.
Self Portrait In The Closet
Love is not a dirty word and
neither is authenticity. Does sugar
turn to vinegar in your mouth?
I only want what you want:
to have my insides hollowed out
by the holy touch of another.
The sun touches my hair and
I turn my face to it.
Not ready to step out
into its full glory
I soak up the rays
like a rose too afraid to bloom.
I don’t have to tell you every time
I kissed a girl to make it real.
I don’t have to explain how I’m both
neither & nor to make the pieces fit.
I am a child of God, made in Their image.
Doves kiss me goodnight,
cooing a lullaby that I set my heart by.
Listen.
It beats only for me.
Ly Faulk
Ly Faulk (they/she) is the Editor-in-Chief of Eco Punk Literary. They are the author of several chapbooks and her latest, I Don’t Think I’d Make A Very Good Borg Drone, is available from Back Room Poetry. They can be reached on Twitter @whismicalraven. Learn more at https://lynnceefaulkcom.wordpress.com/
Why these poems knocked Martheaus out:
Mmmmm, an ekphrastic Frida Kahlo poem. . . we’re eating good today, brawlers. Writing in response to art brings a whole boatload of baggage:
How much context should be brought with the work?
How do you balance visual description and creative license?
How should the work be presented?
I will say, though, that my reason for publishing “Self Portrait In The Bath” is not only because it is written in response to the wonderfully weird Kahlo piece. This poem is capturing in its own right because it works well to utilize the vibrant surrealism of the Kahlo painting to illustrate the speaker's emotional stickiness (ha! See what I did there? Bath . . . sticky . . . okay, maybe it was funnier in my head). One last comment on this one: I appreciate the commentary this poem has on "What the Water Gave Me" by Frida Kahlo. Surreal/strange images sometimes have their meanings nullified, but the idea that the bathtub is accumulating a body's lingering burdens really adds a new light to Kahlo's work.
Let me just say that I'm going to have to hold myself back on praising for "Self Portrait In The Closet" because (wheww) it really knocked my teeth loose. It's an amazing poem that uses its form so effectively. There is a spectacularly incoherent place between the place we love (ourselves, others, the world) and the place our bodies react to those loves. This poem navigates those complexities to help the speaker find this non-dirty authentic love that the first two lines establish. What gets me about this poem is the back-and-forthness (yeah, probably not a real adjective there, but I'm sticking to it). So we get "Does sugar / turn to vinegar in your mouth?" as a play between two tastes. That moves to "I only want what you want: / to have my insides hollowed out / by the holy touch of another" which changes tone and direction after every line break. Then the poem runs with this ever-changing light metaphor that keeps shifting (light is used as a way to see and then as a way to help something grow). And here I am with my late-night milkshake melting to my left because I just want to read and reread this poem!
Interview:
We only see a brief section of your work here at BRAWL, but I'm interested in when these poems come into your poet's life. Are these older or newer poems? Do you notice your voice developing into something new or--if these are older--having developed from this style?
“Self-Portrait In The Bath” is new while “Self-Portrait In The Closet” is a reworking of an older poem. While expanding that early draft, I noticed that I was more comfortable putting myself on the page compared to when I started which I think is an ever-evolving ability that we as artists develop through time, self-reflection, and a lot of luck.
Two self-portrait poems! Are you cooking up something? Martheaus smells a project on the horizon. What does the self-portrait form allow for your poetry?
Well spotted! These are pieces from an untitled hybrid memoir that I am slowly developing. The self-portrait form allows me to look at slices of my life under a microscope. For this series, I narrowed my focus onto different facets of my past and present and allowed myself to dive into each topic with as much honesty as I could muster.
I'd love to hear a little about your influences. Where and when did you discover the Kahlo painting? Take this as your space to nerd out about Kahlo.
“What The Water Gave Me” has been in my life for so long, it’s hard to remember when it first came around. Kahlo has been a great influence on my art, the way she captures the unseen but deeply felt is so inspiring to me. I admire so many of her paintings but this one has appealed to me throughout the years as such a painfully autobiographical and revelatory piece. I, too, experience chronic pain and I have to imagine the bath as a source of relief for Kahlo. It speaks to me that she chose the magical mundanity of the bath as the backdrop to her life.