Eaton Hamilton

The eponymous poem from my last collection:

Love Will Burst Into a Thousand Shapes*: Frida Kahlo

The first time I married Diego

he could not lift the paintbrush

from my womb

I bled cadmium from interior spaces

yawning with pubic hair, seeds

cactus roots

cavernous with absence

feeding myself with the milk of Solanaceae

Demeter’s teats

spitting out sugary skeletons

instead of babies

slipping towards parthenogenesis

After I married Diego a second time

he wound necklaces of thorns around my throat

I bled alizaran crimson from soft flesh

feeding myself dead birds

Other women crowded around

masticating and cheering, but they were nothing

even my sister was nothing

(was I? Was I nothing? With my lovers?)

Diego grabbed the sky

through the cavern in my chest

his arm a straight unbearable pole

and told me this was all the love

he had

Fair is fair; I didn’t have a heart at all anymore

just something swollen

a girl’s red castle of pain

wetly beating on sand

*Frida Kahlo, note to Diego Rivera