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Three Poems by
Alice Friman Far
Tar And who was I with my sticking in r’s where they’re not or erasing them,
as in Hedder Gablah or Emmer—guess
who—Bovary? So I kept my face still,
not wanting to be impolite in case I hadn’t
heard correctly, but then he said it again—Far Tar. He was talking
about its steps being so slicked
with ladybugs, the
rangers had to post Keep Off, so dangerous they
were, and what a shame, because
this Far Tar was the forest’s most popular attraction. But by then, not
grasping what mystery he was going on about,
I was gone, slipped down the
slide of Far Tar and into the pitch of it. A tar baby “pitched past
pitch of grief,” as and beyond sense. How
far is Far Tar? How many miles of
asphalt does it take to get there? Imagine a road of good
intentions, stretching farther, further than
Dorothy’s yellow brick and tar black to boot. A road of no return and less
traveled by, but not paved with grief
or the sludge of sin from Dante’s
fifth bolgia,
but just going on and on,
zigzagging mountains, canyons, and
herds of wild horses, then up and down
and across the frozen steppes slippery
with history thundering across the And what’s
too Far Tar?
tarred and feathered beyond recognition. That’s Far Tar.
Or what about the British
sailor lost to the opium dens of whose venerable
carp still haunt the spot of his
sinking—his last breath, bubbles clinging to the weeds? So far from afternoon
tea, from Mother and the playing
fields, the mushy peas of home, and brussel
sprouts. I call that a far Tar.
A cold Tar. Coal
tar, obtained from a
distillation of bituminous coal, used for the
“heartbreak of psoriasis” or explosives. Get that stuff over you and that’s Far Tar. Or go to where the flows a fair and far 215 miles south. But that’s wrong,
a misnaming if there ever was
one, for tar means west, Ægean for the dying sun grateful for a
west to crawl into each night on bloody knees. If so, Far
Tar is a synonym for tar doubled—Tartar. Not a sauce for
fish, but for a west beyond the West,
beyond the beyond and over the edge,
where the grinding gates of Tartarus open
for us all.
Who’d have thought this man manning
the desk at the visitor’s center was a historian of such magnitude? To speak of Far Tar and know it for what it is—Argus-eyed
and foreboding, as if
it rose in the midst of the forest,
tall as a fire tower, to remind us of
the long climb and the steps
made slick with ladybugs who seem more and
more like us, forgetting the fiery house and the smell of children burning. Originally published in The Gettysburg Review; also included in ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Art
& Science In chemistry,
what’s severed looks to latch on
to any other severed thing:
orphaned electrons zizzing in your wires race to embrace, swirl a DC-do-ing,
re-form their rings. Chemistry likes
adherence, every tick its tock.
Split an atom. What a noise! Then is it not
passing strange when molecules
into proteins make and muster into
muscle, teeth, bone, knee, that when this
vast multitude jostling under skin wakes, it wants to be alone? What did Greta Garbo have on me? Outside my window
the great poplar tosses her leaves
hand to hand like so much change as
if she were rooted to a corner waiting for a bus. How antsy she is for all this autumn fuss to be over. Who knows but
that November rains whet the appetite
for cold: the annual jettison of gold
to stripped-down shudder and pause.
The air holds its breath.
Listen. One red dot on a
bare branch, singing. In here, the
violin’s one note at a time. Originally published in Poetry. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Permanent
Press When I think of
that summer, it opens like a pleat in
cloth: lake, tree, out- blooming itself.
What deep delicious yardage of
suffering: the virginal July we defended,
all the while itching willful and goatish. Five hundred larks rising from the
fields and all I could do was stare at the
scar on your arm— the gold embroidery I longed to touch. What difference
that time and pharmacology delivered too late?
I loved you then in the old way of longing. Four wars, nine recessions, ten presidents: patches. Each year another
July flings her ribboned hat into the
ring, another summer trying to duplicate ours.
Who were we on that park bench that defies being folded and put away? Forget it. Are you still alive? The rest is gibberish. Originally published in Poetry. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Return to Arts & Letters:
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