to Frida Kahlo, in return for the inspiration,
the visions you have given me
My blood
is blue.
Is green.
Is black on paper.
Opaque enough to cut through light.
Transparent enough to fall through
the floors unnoticed.
From my bed, I pour it onto my
expensive cold press paper, watching
as it sinks into cotton pores.
My blood turns red. That means it’s
secreting venom into my bones,
mixing with marrow
like fleshy peppermint sticks.
I have a flare.
A nail drives through the center
of my spine. Metal grates off flecks
of bone. They fall out with the blue
onto my canvas. Stars caught in a night sky.
Still lives turn to wombs with stems.
I push taut green grass blades up through
the earth with my brush. I give myself
Himalayan eyes. Untrusting. Accusing.
Irises big as silver dollars. My blood settles
in my feet, skimming over the arches that float
easily in hot water. A cactus roots itself to
my inner thigh, sending small bursts of emerald
pigment into my veins. My face is painted
seafoam in the fluorescent light. A shadow
forms along the bridge of my nose. Blue
blood forms a stagnant pool under my tongue.
I have the pain again. Impaled through
the spine into the hip. Like a candy apple.
The ones so hard they can break teeth.
Snap bone in half. Pelvis inverts into
a folded wing. I am laid flat.
My knees rotate out and blood laces
through my vertebrae. When the bones
are cool and damp, blood turns black.
October stays with me a while.
I can sketch. I can push bamboo shoots
out through my fingers. My hair becomes
grey—my skin white and opaque, but
reflective like ironstone. The paint,
my blood, is dark.
Nothing is truly black, she says.
So I am green and blue and red
underneath. Organic shades
of grey. My blood can paint
watermelons and parrot feathers.
My blood can multiply German
cells, picking out blurred vision
and sending it to my left eye.
It can find my grandmother, the one
with green blood, somewhere in
my ankles. My mother is in my scalp,
she is in my hair, brushing blue over
every strand, into each cuticle.
Her mother is my brain. She is transparent
in her dependency, opaque in thought.
My father is in my hands, guiding,
channeling grey. I know for certain
that he made the color of my blood. |