Jennifer Lagier

A FEW SMALL NIPS

Inspired by Frida Kahlo’s painting of the same title

Passion guides the blade in a man’s hand as
he slashes his lover’s nude body.
The dead woman’s face is turned,
hair matted with gore, eyes tightly closed.

A black shoe remains on one foot.
The other has vanished.
Red spatters soak white sheet,
his shirt, dull yellow floor.

“A few small nips” reads the banner
towed across the crime scene
by blackbird and dove.
Bloody fingerprints disfigure picture frame,
break the fourth wall.

She is the passive victim of butchery,
robbed of dignity, reduced to cautionary tale.
Those familiar with betrayal
understand how cumulative infidelities
bleed heart and soul dry.


Jennifer's YouTube video reading of "A Few Small Nips":



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Jennifer confesses: "The abuse of women persists through various cultures and times. Frida Kahlo portrayed her struggles as a woman and artist through a series of vivid, visceral self-portraits."

JENNIFER LAGIER lives a block from the Monterey stage where Janis Joplin performed and Jimi Hendrix torched his guitar. She has published nineteen books, in a variety of anthologies and literary magazines, edits the Monterey Poetry Review, helps coordinate Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium Second Sunday readings. Website: jlagier.net, Facebook: www.facebook.com/JenniferLagier/