Welcome back for Zoeglossia’s Poem of the Week Series, curated this month by Kenny Fries, award-winning author of In the Province of the Gods.
To the Non-Disabled White Grrrl with the Frida Kahlo Altar in the Living Room
By Naomi Ortiz
Grrrl, if you’re going to gush to me about Frida,
you better be prepared with an intimate knowledge of nightmares
Those many things in life beyond your control and know them well enough to call their name
You better have experience of body meeting surgical knife
with a man who thinks he knows just how to fix you, holding the hilt
and what surgery after surgery, failing his expectations, feels like
Grrrl, you better know how to make peace with the boredom of pain
Grrrl, if you’re gonna create an altar to Frida in your living room
Then you need to be prepared to speak truth to your darkest vulnerabilities
To talk about what it means to never belong
Living in your own world because your parents smashed into each other, never knowing how to exist in the same place
Grrrl, I see it in your face,
how you want me to respond, all girl – crush – on – artist
But our love of Frida lives differently
You try to take on her diversity
You say you know her bravery
You aspire to be more like her
Me, I see a kindred soul
I want to honor her legacy
by fiercely loving hard
by translating culture through body
by courageously inhabiting passion
Grrrl, Frida was her own woman
Living her own truth
Enduring her own pain
You can’t inhabit someone else, and expect to find your own way
Light-skinned Mestiza with short dark hair looks intently to the side. An earring with a concentric circle design swings below the hairline. The backdrop is a mountain, cacti and desert tress.
Naomi Ortiz is a writer, poet, visual artist, and facilitator and the author of Sustaining Spirit: Self-Care for Social Justice (Reclamation Press). Ortiz currently is focusing on her creative projects exploring disability justice, intersectionality, and connection to place, as well as speaking to individuals and groups delving into the substance of self-care. Ortiz is a 2019 Zoeglossia Poetry Fellow whose poems have been published in We Are Not Your Metaphor: A Disability poetry anthology, on websites such as Split This Rock, Poems and Numbers, VIDA and performed at events such as the Disability Pride Parade in Chicago. Ortiz is a Disabled, Mestiza living in the U.S./Mexico borderlands.
Learn more at her website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.