Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
by Ayokunle Falomo
聽 聽 聽聽聽Frida Kahlo, 1940, oil on canvas
Always, the body & everything that mirrors it.
My forehead like the sky, my eyebrows鈥攏ot
unlike the wings of a dead hummingbird鈥�
converge at the bridge of my nose. Blood
trickles down the neck like water down
a rock. My eyes, two rivers that never meet.
My lips鈥� radish tint. Desire. Lord, the things
I know & wish to unknow. The butterfly鈥檚
attraction to rot, for instance. How difficult
it is to resist metaphor, when I think about
the short-lived existence of the dragonfly.
How exacting it is to unknot the imagined
self from the self that inhabits this body now.
Nobody knows me best but me, it鈥檚 true, but
there is much I do not know.聽Where鈥檚 God
in all of this, I ask. Lord, nobody knows
the troubles I鈥檝e seen. My guardian angels
just watch but don鈥檛鈥攐r can鈥檛鈥攚atch
over me. The story ends, it does, the way
it always does. The body a mirror. Always.
My hair done & wrapped, my body adorned
in white. As though a bride. My neck ornamented
with thorns. Excuse me. I have somewhere to be.
I wrote this in the fall of 2020, waist-deep in the rubble my life had become by then. Or rather, the life I knew as mine. The life I wrongly believed was. During this period, I wrote a series of ekphrastic self-portrait poems鈥攁s a way, perhaps, to reconfigure something of a self from what remained.
By now, much is known about Frida鈥檚 tumultuous life. By using her self-portrait as a springboard, I wanted to see how deep I could dive into myself鈥攅specially the parts where our stories merge. There鈥檚 something risky in that though. Something appropriative even. I know that.
When I brought the first draft of the poem to my MFA workshop, I made it a point to say that it鈥檚 not necessarily a persona piece although it borrows elements of the persona. Though traces of both of us can be found in the poem, the speaker of the poem is not me, and is not Frida either. Not entirely.
While I鈥檓 not opposed to it, I wanted to resist confession for this particular poem. I wanted to tell the story, my story, how I wanted to. To pitch a tent in the desert of 鈥渘obody knows / the troubles I鈥檝e seen鈥� and to invite no one in. To say, the details hardly matter. We all suffer. Sooner or later, a shit-ton of bad shit happens to everyone.
It鈥檚 possible I have said a lot without saying much more than the poem itself is willing to say. I know that too. So be it. If only for now. Maybe one day I鈥檒l have more to say. Until then, this poem.
聽is Nigerian, American, and the author of聽African, American. A recipient of fellowships from Vermont Studio Center and MacDowell, his work has been anthologized and published in print and online, including聽The New York Times, Houston Public Media,聽Michigan Quarterly Review, The Texas Review, New England Review, and Write 91社区 Now, among others. Falomo is currently a Zell Postgraduate Fellow at the University of Michigan鈥檚 Helen Zell Writers鈥� Program, where he obtained his MFA in creative writing.