John Wheway

My Mother Unwraps My Gift of Frida Kahlo’s Me and My Parrots

I’m scared the artist’s monobrow will prompt
her raucous laughter, or sexist jibes, insisting
Frida has a moustache, was really a man –
a woman making art is getting above herself.

But no, she props the picture on her knees.
From her shoulder, Georgie peers with her, ululates
his bruise-black tiny tongue – silently, like grieving
in a silent movie. She must have gone through a lot, says my mother,

Those parrots, they love her. But why did she want four of them?
Couldn’t she have children? I nearly died when I had you.
Drowning in blood. You looked like you’d come
through an accident. One’s more than enough.

So then I tell her about the tram crash
when Frida was 18, her pelvis pierced by a steel
handrail, her wounded friends extracting it,
so she could live to paint, and be worshipped by parrots.