In a Museum with Frida Kahlo
It comes to us all. For me it came in a museum
with Frida Kahlo in the dead of night.
Shadows fell from her paintings,
slashed my pool of light.
Frida in chains. At play with a monkey.
And in a hospital bed.
The groan of cooling walls
accompanied me to the top floor.
I glimpsed Frida again in photographs –
her long neck strained, eyebrows arched,
eyes dark as my own.
No star-filled sky or lure of Lisbon streets
could wrench me from Frida.
It was my son’s voice. How he wasn’t coming home.
Not then. Not for a long time.
It comes to us all. Missing children.
For me it came in a museum with Frida Kahlo
in the dead of night.
.
Belinda has worked as a psychiatric nurse, counsellor, lecturer and creative arts practitioner. She has an MA in Fine and Media Arts and a doctorate in Women’s Voices in Contemporary Poetry.
Her poems have appeared in magazines: Brittle Star, Dream Catcher, The Dawntreader, Sarasvati, ARTEMISpoetry, Obsessed with Pipework, Here Comes Everyone, Eye Flash and The Cannon’s Mouth. Other poems have been published in web-zines; one was recently nominated for poem of the month on Ink Sweat & Tears.
In 2017, she won the Poetry in Motion Competition to turn her poem into a film which has since been shown internationally.
Abegail Morley 