1) "Aztecs wore hummingbird talismans, the talismans being representations as well as actual hummingbird fetishes formed from parts of real hummingbirds: emblematic for their vigor, energy and propensity to do work along with their sharp beaks that mimic instruments of weaponry, bloodletting, penetration and intimacy. Hummingbird talismans were prized as drawing sexual potency, energy, vigor and skill at arms and warfare to the wearer." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hummingbird#In_myth_and_culture Further information: - "What does the hummingbird represent to native american people?": http://www.aaanativearts.com/article1391.html 2) "When Petit writes in Kahlo’s voice, this difficulty is the subtext: When I came to you last night in my thorn necklace with the dead hummingbird, its wings were flying me back to the day of the accident. When the moment came for you to enter me I grinned at the sugar skulls and wax doves and tried not to think of the crash. (8.1-6) Symbols from Kahlo’s Self Portrait with a Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940) reappear here in the thorn necklace, with its connotations of self-sacrifice and Catholic suffering, and in the Aztec icon of the hummingbird. According to Maria Longhenna in Maya Script: A Civilization and its Writing (2000), the Aztecs believed that ‘the soul of a warrior who fell ill in battle became a hummingbird’ (162). The dead hummingbird, then, signifies a malady of the soul; in the context of Petit’s poem, it could refer to the victim’s difficulty in overcoming a ‘crash’, an event that is later shown to be akin to a rape." Source and further information: http://www.bridgew.edu/soas/jiws/Mar08/Brigley.pdf Further information: - "A Frida Kahlo Glossary": http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/zoebrigley/entry/a_frida_kahlo/