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.

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.

** Charles Bernstein, who else?

‘I really enjoyed the books [you sent], especially febrifuge. The delight and force with which you work the language, knead it like dough, and the anger or feistyness that drives much of it . . . I’d love one day to hear you read your work as it especially seems built for a performance.’  ~ Lee Harwood

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