Self-Portrait in Iron
after Frida Kahlo, Autoretrato Hierro: La Columna Rota
I paint to pound nails into flesh
into the fetish of high breast and sternum
the fetish of carved and wracked trunk, to display
the central stack of vertebrae, bone link
chinked, shattered and restacked
I paint to nail fear back into wreckage
it thrusts off from, broken and inconsolable
as a temple unroofed and plundered
the earth, dry and cracked, fissuring behind it
this pain I drive into each day
*
J. C. Todd is co-editor of Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War (Scarlet Tanager Books, May 2026). She is author of three poetry collections, most recently the bilingual (English/Lithuanian) What Kept Me Awake/Kas neleido užmigti? and Beyond Repair. Before retiring, she taught in the Creative Writing Program at Bryn Mawr College and the MFA Program at Rosemont College.
