Vinculum

Poems

Alice Friman

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9780807140116
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Alice Friman's latest collection, Vinculum, roots for deep connections between people, nature, retrospection, and the inevitable biological destiny of the body. Friman's work branches out from the core poem, "The Mythological Cod, " to form a trellis of revelations on religion, sex, humor, science, and history.
Her poems embrace the painful uncertainty of existence and relationships with clear-cut precision. The defiance and directness of Vinculum is matched by its musicality, creating a rich but fragile weave of human attachment.

IV

Alchemy

BERNHEIM FOREST

In fall the forest turns metallic: gold
fading to copper, falling to quiet,
until all that remains
is the scrape of baser metal—the oak
who denies her leaves but holds on
to give them grief. Her brand
of alchemy: gold into iron, daughters
into a rattling sweater of rusty cans
for the wind to snatch at, swiping
with his hook.

Mother, forgive me.

Three years gone, and I’m still
rattling in the shadow of your death.
Tramping these woods, I find myself
looking for substitutes. When I was young
you used to sing to me, but all signs
of a pebble-murmuring brook have dried up.
Roots too—for you were mine surely—
and see how these roots shrivel in air
dangling over a dry culvert. Now
you look back from this forest mirror,
not what you were but what you became.
A stony thing. And there I am, still pushing
your chair, singing “I’m Just Wild about Harry,”
trying to bring you back. That was always
my trouble, wasn’t it? Even now, stuck
on my umbilical twig, rattling the dead for a kiss.

Trip to Delphi

Lately, I’ve begun to look
like my father. Dead and gone,
the man has sent his genes ahead
to do his dirty work. Baleful eye
in the bathroom mirror, the curse
of the House. And so I’ve come
not to the holy city of Byzantium
but to the best I can manage—Delphi,
named for the real thing, Indiana,
home of the Wabash and the professional
choice in swine equipment. Delphi,
where girls grow up to be auxiliaries
shuffling behind the fire truck
in the parade.

But I remember

the other Delphi—Omphalos of the World—
how twenty years ago I lay on my back
among cypress, the sky opening above me
consenting to be read at last. All columns
up again reaching to touch it. Funny
how the brain works to put things back.
The rubble around me—cracked slabs
and steps where girls once walked
leading the procession, pieces of
pediment and pedestal, each one
white as a Dover Cliff. Oh peerless
dumping ground to hold such trash!
Hunks of marble big as giants’ teeth
and strewn about as if the golden cup of
Zeus itself had fallen off its nightstand,
shattering the ineffable bridge.

But what’s the bridge between
all that and this Family Dollar store
in Delphi, Indiana, where I’ve ended up?
This temple consecrated to toothpaste,
batteries, and bargain underwear. Empty
but for me and the thin-lipped guardian of
the till, priestess on a stool, breathing in
the vapors of advanced righteousness. Oh harpy
of the tollgate, agent of the family curse,
do not look at me so. In the twin auguries
of your eyes, double and doubly I am
my father’s daughter. Each crumbling face
witness to the other, split in half
and shattered by the bifocal line.

Far Tar

And who was I
with my New York cawfee,
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 Hopkins said,
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 Russias.

And what’s too

Far Tar? Hawthorne’s Major Molineux
tarred and feathered beyond recognition.
That’s Far Tar. Or what about
the British sailor lost to the opium dens
of Shanghai then dumped in the Whangpoo
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 brussels 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 North Carolina,
where the Tar River rising in the north
flows a fair and far 215 miles south.
But that’s wrong, a misnaming
if there ever was one, for Graves says
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.

The American Heritage

I. FAITH

Let us speak of the ant. Pismire
in the eye of creation, making extension
ladders of themselves up the broken leg
of the picnic table to reach their reward.
Fat-hungry or sugar, black, brown,
red, or fire, but bustling together
for the common good. Praiseworthy
congregation.

The book says Faith

is belief not resting on logical proof
or material evidence. Here’s a story:

Once I watched a lizard watch a wasp
walk across a patio dotted with ants,
her ovipositor swinging beneath her
heavy and bulky as a diaper bag.
She waddled as if she owned the concrete
she walked on. It was her downtown,
her shopping mall. She was vulnerable.

The lizard darted out faster than the brain
can register what it thinks it sees—
a dust storm of lightning and blur,
snapped jaws with two wings sticking out,
and a buzz loud as an electric fence,
his tail whipping like a helicopter blade.

When they separated, she stared him down
then went her way. He, ten times bigger
and not knowing how to count to ten,
raged in fury after his own tail before
slinking back behind the flowerpots.
The ants were victorious. Hallelujah!

II. HOPE

Spittle on the stem: foam of a nest
and next year’s crop of creepy-crawlies
is assured. Silk suspension
swaying from the maple b...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Seeing It Through
• I
• II
• III
• IV
• V
• POSTLUDE
• Notes
• Acknowledgments