Blackbirdan online journal of literature and the artsSpring 2018  Vol. 17 No. 1
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an online journal of literature and the arts
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back GAIL WRONSKY

Breton in Mexico
after meeting Frida Kahlo

Beside the blue of the wall
I’d give you rest—O marvel—from painters’ hands
If you didn’t find me ridiculous

I’ve watched you—profile blazing—crossing the midday street
Whiskered anemones anchored deep in your black-water hair
Silver fingers curling around your wrists

Under the arched whale bones of pallid nights in Mexico
I’ve sent love letters written in the wisdom of obsidian
Night hiding its amethyst teeth in cloud

I’ve shown you my chains the keyless door to my psyche’s chambers
Danced with you under the pepper tree’s sleeves
in slippers of woven grass

Drunk mescal
With you
I’ve faced the stern Trotskys of Russia Leon and Natalia Sedova

Been a tourist of dusk
A tourist of pyramids of markets of memory’s turquoise
Been a foolish man waving goodbye to a window
To surrealism