Lori-Ann Tessier

FIGHTING WITH FRIDA KAHLO

She offered me tequila.
I declined,
can't hold my liquor.

We launched in without hesitation.
I was born dead I said, what more do you want?

What they did to me was unspeakable .
I was held up with steel,
cut and braced, the pain was like a thousand hot suns.
She sneered.

Doctor tied me up and hung me
with weights and pulleys in traction
I countered.

Her: They operated without anesthesia,
plastered me in casts for months,
witholding morphine!

You're wasted I said.
Besides they left me to bleed
through my stitches for days.

Angry now she threw tequila
in my face:
They cut off my head
and sewed it back on!!!

They ripped out my beating heart and held it up
like a trophy for me to see I cried!

They made me eat my aborted fetus
she wailed.

We pulled hair and scratched faces.
Bitch! She bellowed.
She hit me with her steel brace,
I knocked her silly with my crutch.

Get out of my life I screamed.
You go first she yelled!
We lay there, panting with sweat.
As it slowly dawned on us both:
Great, now neither one of us can get up.

* * *

ODE TO MY SOCKS AND PABLO NERUDA

I bought them for myself
these socks
knitted lovingly by an unknown hand.
As colorful as a Peruvian cape,
I wear them with pride
slipping my feet into them
as if into a winter sunset.

Violently colorful
as a baboon's ass
my deformed feet
are honored, transformed
in this way.

Brilliantly my spastic feet
are as acceptable to me
as two flexible acrobats in sequined leotards
woven of fire,
glowing like comets.

Disability is to disability
as wholeness is to wholeness
and what is beautiful is twice beautiful
when it is a matter of two colorful socks
made of wool in winter.

Lori-Ann Tessier has been writing poetry for 15 years. She works as an educational tutor in elementary schools and at a residential schools for young people with disabilities. Tessier has cerebral palsy.