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.
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