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.
I am moved by the way the poem underscores the physical pain within Frieda Kahlo’s devastating self-portrait. Beyond Kahlo’s image, the poem contemplates what is invisible and employs words to rematerialize the experience of unrelenting physical and emotional pain—and how this is complicated by the “fetish” of societal conditioning. JC’s words create additional avenues of seeing within the painting while questioning the very act of seeing. Fantastic!
The above “Anonymous” comment is from MC Catanese. Sorry that I neglected to include my name!