After artwork by Kay Sage
Poetry by Ellis Fraser
Danger, Construction Ahead
There’s a Diverging Diamond Interchange on Courthouse Rd. in North Stafford. There is no horizon here, only puppetry. You’re permitted a bird’s eye delusion, but you’ll be through soon.
You’re making your way to Leesburg. It’s always seventy-five-minutes. Or it’s three-and-a-half
hours of October-brown and metastatic data center sprawl. You’re wondering if the road or your car is at fault. The ulcer was ultimately cancer. Here, you can be right on the wrong side of a two-lane road. Driving west from Great Falls after 1 AM, you’re swimming in the silent sea of
Caterpillar. You’re following a white van on the left side of an empty four-lane highway.
Men Working
High above the Occoquan river, on VA State Route 123, mom pulled over the Nissan Armada.
The hazards flashed in the “shoulder.” The commonwealth of south-of-Springfield sluggers fled the lots, forming the queue beside us. Mom had a bible in the center console! Thank God! It was well-read and bound in worn leather. Mom’s hand rested on it, and the policeman laughed a little when he noticed. Dad’s navy sedan was totalled on the back of our bumper. Then, it was well past rush-hour. The bridge was empty when I can’t find what happened next.
Third Paragraph
They keep saying the mountains are miles away. But they’re right there! I was old enough to
know colors from Prismacolor pencils. The desert is the color of ginger root. It is the color of
yellow ochre. The low brush at the Manzanar Memorial site was the color of celadon. Giichi
Matsumura walked away to paint. I was too young to understand why his family remained in
prison when the gates were unlocked. How much water did he carry with him? I remember
thinking of families. I remember photographs in a museum. I remember the lack of privacy. I
was cold. I felt sick when I read a ghost story. I felt guilty. Ghosts don’t exist. I could never
believe in ghosts. Demons, you will meet them. Storms exist. Ghosts are not waiting. They have
not returned. The desert is entirely empty!
Margin of Silence
There is still some sky, but everything’s a bend in the road. You know the horizon is high, but
your car is tall. You’re driving south, and east, and it rained last night. What sky you dare to
notice, you’ll soon confuse with pavement gray. Starbursts disrupt the algae and pads, and the
high black water looks over the lanes. At its mercy, you’ll wash away.
Summer has started, maybe summer hasn’t started. A spring, long since passed, prematurely learned decay. New green is the guise for its parasitic host. It’s eating away at the tree sides, befriending your memories of bread mold.
Tomorrow is Never
I continue explaining how philanthropy and gambling are two different things. The tourists
gather around me. They expect the latitude and longitude of their destination.They’re listening
for a recitation of iron gates, for details they can translate for their GPS. They make it easy for
me. It’s okay if the gate is locked, we don’t have to open it. They can look through or over it and
find an adequate obelisk, or familiar arches. He’s in the wilderness, is my best answer. Maybe
he’s ashes. Does it matter?
On Winchester Street, I think of acid and clay under my feet. There are bright bones and
broken creamware. Can you hear him? Someone is down there!
Sometimes it rains. The clay slides, then the rain subsides. Once it’s dry, go outside and
find white .58 caliber minies. They stare through the grass blades like easter lizard eggs.
I’m at the top of the hill, but I can’t see where it slopes. I’m on the threshold of a
400,000 brick plinth. It supports nothing. Have I justified it?
From Another Approach
The hailstones were the size of ice that arrives in a red plastic Coca-Cola cup. There was a
rainbow somewhere, but as far as I looked up was just the ever-approaching trail. There were
plenty of overhanging rocks to cover our heads until the storm passed. The sky was soon clear.
We climbed the steep hill. We arrived. The lake was a real lake. I could not make sense of the
tension in my shins, or the pressure in my knees. I could not see the height. Dad told me to
breath deep in through my nose, and out through my mouth, but I was still having trouble
breathing. The lake was too flat. It was held up high in the sky. It was held in the arms
surrounding it. It was encircled by ordered pine trees.
Drawing an Extremely Low Horizon as a Means of Creating a Sense of Peace
Did you know that loofah crawls on cedar fences surrounding Virginia homes? Did you know
that squash and basil become leviathans in this climate? Did you know that a black widow bite is not always deadly? Did you know that the sea has spiders too?
We have to leave where we live to learn about it. Did you know that the swamp is an ocean floor?
Sources:
Kay Sage, Danger, Construction Ahead, 1940
Kay Sage, Men Working, 1951
Kay Sage, Third Paragraph, 1953
Kay Sage, Margin of Silence, 1942
Kay Sage, Tomorrow is Never, (1955)
Kay Sage, From Another Approach, (1944)
Kay Sage, China Eggs (Starbooks, 1997), 10.
From introduction by editor Judith Suther, regarding Yves Tanguy’s technical debt to
Dali.
Ellis Fraser is a poet, document researcher and genealogist from Fredericksburg, VA.
She is studying English at the University of Mary Washington and works with 19th- and
20th-century periodicals. Her website is https://ellisfraser.blog/
Arcturus 