after Frida Kahlo’s Girl with Death Mask

Will the spirits of the dead
find you where you wait alone
el llano?

You hold marigolds, pumpkin
seeds to tempt in a clammy
fist

You are too young to know
there will be no graveside
vigil

rung in offerings for the mis-
carried, no altar of electric
purple

and blood orange, no candles
or papel picado streamers, no
faded pictures

to parade in La Alumbrada,
no butterfly boats across
the lake

to far tombs. You nibble on
the corner of your sugar skull,
wooden

tiger talisman aloof. The sky
hungry: your destiny decided
Sweetness

of meringue and paint the only
anaesthetics to mask your
pain

Jane Frank

 

Jane Frank’s latest chapbook is WIDE RIVER (Calanthe Press 2020). Most recently, her poems have been published in Other Terrain Journal, Antipodes, Takahe, Burrow, Grieve vol 8 (Hunters Writers Centre 2020), Meridian and The Bengalaru Review. Her unpublished manuscript Wolf Moon was shortlisted in the 2020 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize.

© 2021