Portrait of Body as Frida Kahlo Painting Luther Burbank by Emory Brinson
After Portrait of Luther Burbank by Frida Kahlo
I disintegrate
Into fertilizer. petals underneath a body’s palm. cranberries crushed into paint//bloodwine
I am disintegration
The multitude of my body’s pieces (all ache, more pain than peace)
I exist beyond the art and biography and the way my body has failed me.
Reincarnation in motion.
I will disintegrate
Fragment of time and place and body
Seeding of skin//planting of pores
Botany of body, anatomy of growth.
They take cuttings of my wet tissue for replanting
Samples of the way my brain turns just before undergoing the needle
I am disintegrating
Blood and bone and brick dust stripped from under
The epidermis. Isn’t the dense clasp of earth, the reclamation of the body,
Worth everything else?
Paint the way roots take hold of the heart,
Unleashing the strain of its bloody burden from the back and ribcage
With a splintering curl of wood.
To become the fertile soil, length of body flush with resistance; release of the rest
I am the disintegrated
What remains of the body after the stench of death and smoked sinew has faded.
I die with half of a history. A legacy of letting the damp heat of my work
Make up for everything else. Painted in life as I am in death
Peace in pieces//uprooted and unquieted
I flower myself back to life by
Teasing the stick of capillaries from clutch of root cap//capsule
Under lizard tongue.
I become one of your hybrid creatures, grow you from the soft
Of my belly, nutrients in my slowing digestive sap
I have disintegrated
Become the ground beneath your feet//giver of life
Strip away defining features, phenotypes of cross pollination
Unearth only the shards of my remains.
I trade you a face and a body and half a century of work
For a bag of plumcots and a promise
To plant a garden in my grave, ciruelas(clavicle)//fresas(femurs)//limones(liver)
To chew on the fruits of our interjecting labor, my essence sweet and sour on the tongue
Nurture life from between my decaying bones
Where there once was chaos and bloodshed and revolution
Something more than my body of work.
I become the art. The trembling earth. The watershed of want.
A portrait of body//disintegrated
I Joyfully Await The Exit And Hope To Never Return
Emory Brinson is at Brown University studying literary arts and policy. She has been recognized by Scholastic and the National YoungArts Foundation. Recently she was a finalist for the Passages North Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cargoes, VULCANALIA '21, and The Apiary Magazine. @brinson_emory