Joshua Garcia: You Wake Up

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

Two Fridas

            After Frida Kahlo 

Tender is the hand cupped under your own

like a sickbed or a pedestal or an altar. 

You wake to find your fingers braided 

into the hair of your underarm and a palm 

pressed over pectoral, the silverskin 

curtain to a stage of loosed wire. 

Move your hand and you spill into the humid 

expanse like a spool of silk. 

Blessed is the hand cupped in your own

as you bleed onto a clean white frock—

a pledge of allegiance to your body.

---

Joshua Garcia lives and writes in Charleston, South Carolina, where he is pursuing an MFA in poetry at the College of Charleston and is an editorial assistant at Crazyhorse. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Image, Hobart, Ruminate Magazine, and elsewhere.