Milk the Paint
she wash ashtree
frilly, seafood lush
barely allowable beauty
overlapping undersight
surviving brush
with feminine avoidance
anonymoustache fulgence
throwing over feel me
clothing canvas
soapsending gentle sonar
unafraid of nothing
in a flash
spring bulb blue. blown.
cover
self-
per(missive
lining
.tough enough
wash leaf behind first blush
Febrifugue
Naomi Foyle’s ‘so-called so-called L*A*N*G*U*A*G*E poetry’** chapbook – written during her year working at the Kootenay School of Writing, and published by treeplantsink press (Vancouver 1995)- is now a collector’s item. (Yes, apostrophe spotters, until further notice, there is only one collector involved.) Printed on Canuck-size paper, and too large and spineless to stock on the average UK bookshelf, the Sale or Return copy left at Compendium Bookshop was returned with a footprint ingrained on the author’s possibly erotic cover illustration. This copy has mysteriously disappeared into literary history, but one embossed with an over-size coffee ring is still available.
Seriously, this is some of the best avant-garde poetry Naomi Foyle ever wrote. If you don’t hate that sort of thing.
Febrifuge: a medicine or treatment that reduces fever; a cooling drink.
Fugue: 1) contrapuntal composition, in which a short melody or phrase (the subject) is introduced by one part and successively taken up by others and developed by interweaving the parts. 2) Psychol. loss of awareness of one’s identity, often coupled with flight from one’s usual environment.
** Charles Bernstein, who else?