JUICY

This painting by Frida Kahlo is juicy...called, "The Bride Frightened at Seeing Life Opened" (1943) and part of the Gelman collection from Mexico--this image asks questions, sparks curiosity, displays the ripening of fruit before a pale doll's careful gaze. The title--yes, this is juicy too...it hints of sexuality, inexperience, and the hungering physical body.



When I hear the word, "juicy"--Frida Kahlo immediately comes to mind. I think of her visage stalking me all over Taos when I was there--she peered out of beveled glass windows and from silkscreened t-shirts. Poetry was scrawled for her on the back of the bathroom stall door in a crumbling restaurant. Poetry...her life, pure poetry...

When I think of juicy poetry, I think of Renee Gregorio, who I also stumbled across in Taos. First, a film she appeared in about writing and creation...then, the bookstore's local section bowed with the prodigious regional talents and there she was, this example just one of many I could have pulled from her incredible collection, The Storm That Tames Us (1999):

Gladiola

The beauty of the hot pink gladiola
is almost too much
to bear--its color like swelled lips,
lips that have kissed too much.
The arc of its stalk curves
as if it's the hand of a dancer, reaching
up toward an imagined sky, the uppermost flowers
not yet opened.
Their fragrance, anyway, is slight,
and for all their color, they feel unpainted,
yet generous, like the love of a ten-year-old girl,
before makeup and puberty.

I like looking up
at this flower, purchased today at Wild Oats
for exactly $1.59 with the thought of buying
a good deal of beauty at a tiny price.
And, it's true, the slant of the stalk
could set me to dancing--it's a Saturday night,
after all, and the buffalo grass is growing,
the laundry's drying on the metal wire
in the backyard, and the moon is only half-full
or half-empty, depending upon the tilt
of your thoughts as you dare to look up
into the city sky with its desperate and yearning stars
just dying to show their light.


I feel the longing in this poem and it speaks to me of all of the evocative stirrings of love and springtime and over-kissed lips. Juicy things all...on this quiet Thursday morning.

More takes on "juicy" from talented mamas...
More "poetry" to wet your appetite for inspiration...

Don't say I didn't warn you...