Frida Kahlo in Brooklyn
We learn at the exhibit in the Brooklyn Museum that Frida liked to use Pond’s Dry Face Cream and loved Revlon’s “Everything’s Rosy” lipstick,
and that Diego, just months after she married him, fucked her younger sister, Cristina. Frida screams in several self-portraits for Diego being such a dick.
In one, Frida abuses herself by butchering her hair; in another, she slicks her hair down with Brylcreem and puts on a man’s suit—she’s male without a prick.
She said Diego was the worst best thing in her life, ever. She was no mystic.
A Favorite Room of Mrs. Adelaide Frick at the Frick Collection in NYC
Putti watch from clouds, which seem like cotton balls, as, far below, Fragonard’s lovers plan a tryst; this drawing room—mostly waterfalls and pink cherubs spying lovers kiss— Frick purchased, wallpaper and all.
This was after Pittsburgh labor violence, dismissed by Frick, who called in Pinkerton and an arsenal of militia, killing union organizers on a list of workers locked out of Carnegie steel. Putti watch from clouds—
Adelaide’s in mourning (don’t look for a mourning shawl): at one, Martha swallowed a pin doctors missed, that she and Henry missed—that they all missed. Martha dies not yet six. Putti watch from clouds.
Stephen Gibson’s latest poetry collection, Self-Portrait in a Door-Length Mirror, won the 2017 Miller Williams Prize from the University of Arkansas Press. He’s also published six prior collections: The Garden of Earthly Delights Book of Ghazals (Texas Review Press, 2016), Rorschach Art Too (2014 Donald Justice Prize, Story Line Press, West Chester University), Paradise (Miller Williams prize finalist, University of Arkansas Press), Frescoes (Lost Horse Press book prize), Masaccio’s Expulsion (MARGIE/IntuiT House book prize), and Rorschach Art (Red Hen Press).