Chelsea Dearden
by Kristin Garth, Regular Contributor
after Legal Eagles
She sleeps inside a chalk outline of what
remains when she turns nine. After she climbs
last time into an alabaster wrought
iron bed, piece of cake, a platinum
head singed forever in father’s studio.
How many daddies must she show the blaze
of her biography? From flickers follows
pleas to stay, doe-eyed promise to obey,
if they could only penetrate a corpse
with foreknowledge, without remorse. Coffin
flavored birthday cake, favorite artist
his burning makes her pale palette crimson,
her body brush detailing both their deaths.
What she will offer next is what is left.
image: Pixabay
Author’s Note: I was writing poetry involving aspects of my child abuse and my own artistic obsession with my trauma when I first watched the movie Legal Eagles as a teenager. Daryl Hannah plays a performance artist named Chelsea Dearden who reenacts her father’s death and her own trauma again and again in her work. It was the first time as a child in a small town rather uncultured upbringing that I was exposed to an artist that was making art of their trauma. It spoke to me. I also related to this character’s intense daddy issues that play out in the film as she seduces Robert Redford’s character after first exposing him to her art, her wound. I feel like I do this with people I love. I want them to love that little me that got lost and understand her before I can give myself to them. There’s just a lot in this character I relate to and so I decided to write a little sonnet homage to her as part of my manuscript The Stakes.
