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Mylar Woman by Myles Boisen |
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PRIMITIVE MAGIC
"And so they are forever returning to us, the dead." — W. G. Sebald (from The Emigrants) by Catherine Fraga My father, his Polaroid camera in hand actually said "cheese" and the machine whirred, expelling a print, negative still attached. He checked his watch, shaking the covered snapshot as if it was a thermometer and then at the right moment with a surgeon's delicate hands, picture and negative separated in a single motion, revealing who knew what? Mystery clung to each impending image, the camera conjuring up pictures of what was right before our eyes, right before our eyes. Taking turns holding memory as it eased into focus reflecting our imperfectability, reminding us by contrast of our humanity. Glossy talismans in unreal colors as ephemeral as breath on glass. Now, after six decades, the SX-70 is gone, despite incredulous shutterbugs mourning its demise, posting pleas on SavePolaroid.com. Digital cameras allow us to discard whatever we decide is not quite right, unlike the power of Polaroid to salvage forgotten lives and the finality of a blemish. Just like the remains of an Alpine climber frozen until a glacier released him after 72 years— a few polished bones and a pair of hobnailed boots, the Polaroid may return having migrated behind the refrigerator or forgotten, clipped to the back of the Buick's sun visor— a grave eloquence, startling in its honesty. FROM A ROWBOAT ON THE MEKONG RIVER —Late summer, 2008 by Catherine Fraga Preecha, the tour guide, hears their disenchanted sighs, tourists nearly mourning, their bodies straining toward shore, so many sights to see in the ebony landscape of evening but nothing they desire only the fluorescent lights of hotels, restaurants, highway overpasses. He wants what they want: the mesmerizing dance of fireflies a magical gathering of blinking lights thousands decorating banana trees lining the shore. Preecha is reasonable. He knows the disappearance of fireflies does not match the tragedy of polar bears and Siberian tigers. Yet he keeps rowing, sweat pooling beneath his eyes, the ache in his shoulders dull and determined until two miles farther he glimpses a shock of lightning bugs undulating, the rhythm of his childhood, of memory, and the passengers hushed in thanksgiving a temporary victory over progress. BRAIDED LIVES "Maybe I enjoy not-being as much as being who I am." — Stanley Kunitz by Catherine Fraga This is not an accident: I find a tooth in a pocket of asphalt winking at me like a new quarter and as I bend to claim it I hear my mother's voice like a familiar blanket settling in my brain saying it's a fine line a very thin fine line between the lucky and the not-so-lucky because this tooth large adult dull-white has a story and it begins with a woman in a budget motel just off some highway room 16 at the far end of the parking lot boasting a view of the Beacon station she is wearing only underwear only a faded mint green slip she leans up against a quilted dingy beige headboard a plastic cup of ice pressed against one eye the eye that is swollen shut with purple bruises some game show is on the television but she is not listening the painting above the dresser reminds her of a jewelry box her aunt gave her on her ninth birthday painted with white and yellow daisies a field so thick with color you could probably hide from someone for a long time which reminds her to check the door once more yes it's locked presses a finger into the bloody hole in her gum lights another cigarette this slight shadow of a woman whose life for a moment has postponed my own.  Catherine Fraga Photo by Anita Scharf Catherine Fraga is author of a collection of poems titled, Running Away with Gary, the Mattress Salesman and has been published widely. She is currently at work on a collection of prose poems. Catherine was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry and last year was awarded a month long writer's residency in Portugal. She has taught writing at Sacramento State University for the last eleven years and has lived in Sacramento since the early 1980s. Catherine has recently begun to venture into visual art — collage and mixed media — and is enjoying the layering of words and images. |
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