Adrienne Fidelin Restored
by
Anne Whitehouse
Anne Whitehouse’s poetry collections include Steady, Outside from the Inside, Meteor Shower, The Refrain, Blessings and Curses and The Surveyor’s Hand. She is the author of a novel, Fall Love. Adrienne Fidelin Restored is Anne’s fifth chapbook published by Ethel Zine & Micro Press, following Surrealist Muse, about Leonora Carrington; Escaping Lee Miller; Frida, and Being Ruth Asawa.
from Adrienne Fidelin Restored
“The Bushongo of Africa
Sends His Hats to Paris,”
put me on the pages
of Harper’s Bazaar in 1937,
the magazine’s first Black model,
even if I was segregated
on a separate page that faced the page
featuring the two white models.
We wear hats made of beads
and cowrie shells in geometric patterns.
One of the hats is topped by feathers.
One sprouts three horns,
one sports a perky, ruffled brim,
another a flat visor.
The series was Man’s idea, inspired
by an exhibition
of Congolese headdresses
he’d seen in a gallery that spring.
In the picture used by Harper’s Bazaar,
I look away from the camera.
My chin is tilted, and I am smiling,
with one arm raised, my elbow bent,
and my hand behind my head,
an ivory armband
and tiger-tooth necklace
against my bare skin.
