When Frida is 19, she has a terrible accident.
I'm sure most of you know, she was a bus accident
and she was pierced by a steel pillar,
and for the rest of her life she was
in horrendous pain of varying degrees
had I don't know how many operations--
and began to paint after that.
This is the very last piece of the book,
and the last thing I'll read tonight.
When I was writing it the only thing
I really thought of the whole time I was writing it was to--
how to get Frida's limp into the prose.
How to feel it.
How to palpably get that body to feel what
it must have been like for her, all that
into the prose somehow.
That prose and poetry, and all those things
should be able to do things on certain levels
and in certain ways.
If you ask it to--
if you sort of propose it as the thing
that dictates and makes the peace
and gives it its integrity.
So this is called, "World Tonight".
In the book-- in this book, Frida has already died
and this is sort of conjuring that I do at the end.
"World Tonight".
"You are walking down a dirt road
alone, free for a moment from the sorrow
and drama of your life, free of your body's pain, free of free.
You are walking without physical pain for a moment
though it informs each step, drawn to the swirling.
A little free, a little free of dragging a right foot.
Well, you have not forgotten it for a moment
sucking on a paintbrush and looking up
into the fiesta of the sun.
You see yourself walk away, walk out,
out of your leather corset, your steel corset, your plaster
corset, your corset of thorns and tears,
your abyss of dark birds.
Diego, Diego.
I am sweeping the Earth, I am soaking the Earth
with my tears dragging a right foot.
Sorrow brushing up, rubbing up slightly against her.
I am sweeping the Earth with my hair, with my grief.
All is failed, but the light is not failed.
Walking away from your marriage, which
seems to be failing for a second time.
One good leg.
You take her hand.
She pulls on your necklace of swallows and thorns.
You take her to the ditch at the end of the dirt road.
You chew the Earth at her door screaming for her
to come with you down the dirt road home.
You take her hand and pull her with you free.
A little free, free of--
You have come to the place of utter sorrow and coast
as the end approaches.
Smoke rising from the river.
As the end nears, you cradle a sugar skull.
And the small boats put up their white sails and your workers
of the world unite once more.
See how the shoreline recedes and the boats and the dirt road
you loved and walked.
No, and the roses.
You were dragging her here to this,
and your country soaked in blood and broken.
Yes, you whirl in your comunista,
raising a fist, and cigarette, and swagger,
mouthing Trotsky all your thorns and roses.
Your country body gone to blood and broken.
And you charm her with your fetish, and image,
and promises.
And she watches as you suck on the edge of your corset.
You swear into her ear as you lower her.
You bisect in every possible way her body
in the ditch laughing maniacally left for dead
on the dirt road home without pain, in pain, in dread
you are devouring time and the Earth and the woman.
You were devouring women in your bravado
and the woman mud had smeared all over her breathless points
and gasps at the little deer pierced by arrows.
Laugh and cuss scrawl of her body with Earth and blood
you whisper, I hope the exit is joyful
and I hope never to come back.
Hourglass because I am running out of legs life free, free
of."