The River Night

Poems

On the Loch

Every Friday after work, we feed the Loch Ness Monster, who purrs to shore, slinking through water.   We picnic in our grey daily gear, graze on fish ‘n’ chips, and chew over futures rare as Jurassic snapshot.   We ignore the signs – Please don’t feed into the myth – to hand Nessie hot [...]

Poems

Narita

Carp in the Emperor’s pond swim slowly with open mouths, swallowing clouds.

Poems

Work Series

Some Joke The joke is fading down from red to pink as a woman I remember from years ago limps past. Whatever happened to her husband? Either ‘some’ or ‘real’. Not sure which one dominates. Though there’s a contrast in the square, why always a square? One half was easier than the other. But again [...]

Poems

Begging Bowls

Collect as many bowls as possible: from market stalls, junk shops, jumble sales, friends, anywhere. Made of any material: metal, wood, plastic, ceramic or wicker. They shouldn’t be too ornate and preferably be between 10 and 30 cms in diameter. Then do three things with these bowls on three successive days. Day one Choose a [...]

Poems

Diaries of the World

diaries of the world     fog on the river kneels & the eye bent low & uncial ~ the empire of the flesh     you at the heart of some rooted thing         dark chore,   dark mammalian eye

Poems

Zionville

    material signature of the illegible     cover me, grasses with your reeds & tongues ~  

Poems

Meeting Me There Later

you were always meeting me there later: by the time you arrived at Grand Centraal there were too many Dutch angles – bicycles cars, trams – and buildings with hooks. The canal   was already oil - a trick of densities - in the lamp-light: Vermeer o' milk. Van Gogh o' a thousand candles. Frank. [...]

Poems

Feathers of Doom Littering the Ground

The leaves of the birch tree where crows build their nests were electrified and magnetized.— I saw a surge of ghostly bodies. I saw fireflies glimpse like small eyes of rats. I saw feathers dropping like bombs, littering the ground. I saw wings surge and flutter, ashen and apocalyptical. I saw cremated images, portraits, indeed. [...]

Poems

After Being Examined Again

  that's enough now        I've had                       if there is standing in front of mirrors                          only here there is breathing in and holding                         the way skin breathes lift that leg                                               thoughtless wait here and read this                      I would questionless                                        bury my head [...]

Reviews

Review: Making it Rain in Words – History & the Poet: Essays on Australian Poetry, Robert Wood

History & the Poet: Essays on Australian Poetry Robert Wood Australian Scholarly Publishing, Victoria, 2017 ISBN 9781925588576 144pp, $AU24.95 Robert Wood’s remarkable series of essays on Australian poetry, History & the Poet, is engaged with the political but is less a call to arms than a call to roots. The central question of this innovative [...]

Poems

Becoming (from memory and a Hocąk tale)

some futile thing that can't be secured (attention or a plastic toy – does it matter?) he slams his bedroom door stands for a long moment before the goldfish bowl and knocks (a part of him, split off, will call it an accident, knowing it isn't) the food container into the water – their small [...]

Poems

Sacramental Agnostic, Mr Christian

I arrive by way of mutiny. As second to the self’s captaincy I amend a creed in this squall.   Slops of Councils wash from the tarred deck. This briny world is a fictive place   I’ve never been outside a tale of grizzled tropes that signify fidelity   of a kind, or otherwise. Everything’s [...]

Poems

Another time and place where we might belong

in this divided city, a black man passing you by in the street usually nods - a way of opening up another time and place where we might belong. and in this divided city, there are those tough days you want to forget what it is like living here, that as hard as you struggle [...]

Poems

How to be an Alpha Male

Doubt your position, then stand over it. Use expansive gestures in small malls. Do not confuse confidence with white magic. This can be overstated. This can't. The eyes have it. Look. Every one. In the Eyes. Be the after-shave commercial you were born to. Not everyone can smell like you. It's true. Possibly wear a [...]

Poems

A Temple For You.

A place to think just be. A chamber of boiling water, a chamber of imported wood, a chamber of casual commerce. Over green tea bags two couples discuss overseas real estate acquisitions. The younger woman's partner is a partner, the older man says he is an affiliate. The younger woman recently lived in Bali for 6 months [...]

Poems

The Horror

The unblinking doll in the room I am staying in blinked. I looked under the bed and there was the roof. One of my teeth is talking to me. The power is out but there are lights in my head. Outside the window is where we buried the dogs. The thunder arrives before the lightning. [...]

Poems

And Coast

First you have to pass through the trees At night in the headlights they frame urban legends of escaped hook-handed criminals Mist swirls   Then the forest is felled by open sky but you cannot yet see the beach Beach houses yes, of wood & outside stairs & verandahs Up there: the views   But [...]

Poems

March Heatwave

I’ve been noticing women’s toes. The neighbour’s lawn is a badly cooked naan bread. Someone should invent the opposite of a hot water bottle. We no longer have the right to colours. It is reflex to recoil from sour milk. I can’t remember his face: I would know it instantly. Silence like the dead air [...]

Poems

Zionville

      tremor-anthem, opposable   under-garth (as of thumbs)   *   corrects for blood’s loose breviary,   viral cleft   or para-chantry   *   valiant field, I ley   your golden tongue     your soft son your leaping song   hung with curfew  

Poems

onetaste

thewaythesunlightstickstomeandslickstomelikeoiltowateritisoften hard totakea breathwhenitis sowarm-ing likeabeehiveswarm-ing everyth-ingpushingoutwardsandburrowinginwardsthereare cablefibreopticnervesand openairinternets andphishingsites andthemanonthemoonwavingatthesoundonmytongue andastrangesenseofdistanceinthiseasyclaustrophobialikemaybetodayiwilltakeamilkbathor maybetomorrowor maybernevereven itdoesntmatterbecausethewaytimewalkspastmyhouseevery morninganddropsaletterinmycasketitssortof conviviallikemaybethesuniswatchingitsshadowcomeoverus andmaybethemoonisdissolvingintospace andmaybetheoreosaremeltingintheirbox andeveryth-ing be-ing mean-ing expand-ing inthecupofaheartthatissofullofloveand soemptyofitselfitsalways okaytobesmalltosomeoneand largerthananyone sunmoonmanletterboxoreaheartyoujustdunkrightinbecausethetasteissolovelyanditneverlastsforevereither

Poems

Selworthy Beacon

I can’t imagine being other than a rough fire   perforated by flesh & glass         “withdraw his ships” the narrow fane   among the eucalyptus       add one stone to the pile of stones   we call a cairn     that’s all it is now     that’s [...]

Poems

Extra Virgin

When they see a triangle atop a square they don’t see a house. Even the saint is quietly desperate. I have my ear to the peninsula. This much is never expected. Not a chance of ugliness not now but later on they will forget their names and the month will be wet. The bay of [...]

Poems

Moab

We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we             shouldn't be involved with – Trump   Patti Smith read Footnote to Howl on our first night at Blues Fest, threw the poem on the floor & spat – holy punk & common cold thick with holy mucus   [...]

Poems

The Last Word

Even a race to Obama, she was gonna beat Obama. I don't know who would be worse, I don't             know, how could it be worse? But she was going to beat -- she was favored to win -- and she             got schlonged, she lost, I mean she lost.  –Trump   A muscle of [...]

Poems

Local bus from Tampere to Helsinki

As I board, the driver asks for my passport like he already knows we will travel to another country.   Along straight highways lakes shimmer under power lines. Silver birches shake yellow leaves. Dark clouds come with rain.   Beside me a young man reads Learning Vietnamese in Finnish. For a change of mood he [...]

Poems

Splintered Viking Boat Song

this is not about Ragnar, or shot in blue celluloid (max hyperised gore)   woad doesn’t come into it or Yorkshire graveyards / horizontal corpses   an invocation sung in Kernewek for fishermen, misses its point (Poseidon’s prong drips blood / widows weep salt in paintings)   it’s not the dirge of left-hand piano drills [...]

Poems

Living with Sieve

my words fall through a gully plunge straight as Wallaman Falls splash deep shadowed ponds to get your attention   yours dabble through a plain by a river delta, the braids of your thoughts spread wide collecting in puddles that evaporate before they find the sea   my words plunge through rock fissures only speleologists [...]

Poems

Nightlines

get the grimness gone   we're of the instant here, lying down drawn out   taking our dark like a pill   then the things you say inside are true pause what you tell yourself is news   draw the flowers and you must smell them you only have to do it in your head [...]

Poems

Theater of the Void

There was a lot of screaming and praying to Jesus. I guess I’m very confused about why this scene. What might make sense in one place might not be recommended in another. It was all night of slam, bang, boom. It bubbled up from the doors, seeped in from the windows. People always want to [...]

Poems

What to Eat When Someone Dies

I’m really having a hard time understanding today right now. None of us even tried to step outside. Dave put a shotgun to his chest so we could study his brain. I didn’t like him staring at me. He often talked to himself. Now we’re kind of like: How do we know if he was [...]

Poems

The Gap in the Trees

I’m less articulate than grass. I hobble on my syllables hoping something will surrender a thought, maybe, a kindness, a practicality. A gap in the trees before sunset does more.   The wind picks up as the horizon I stare at slips away from the slope of today’s sun. In some places there are no [...]

Poems

The Book Says

the book says all pages are mine   but more than that, the book says pages take on existence within me   a page outside is not a page but a sheet of paper   a sheet of paper does not make a page, nor many pages a decent book   it is what is [...]

Poems

On Living Tomorrow

A new hat at my age! Miracles still howl about the parklands & will surprise any one of us.   What criteria? Is this sorcery, karma or the stubby immovability of numbers? I see across the bay to my death -   it is surrounded by the ghosts formed from aviation fuel, the benzenes of [...]

Poems

Atom

“A cruel, unfeeling temper has distinguished the monks of every age and country” Edward Gibbon The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire   # So many ways to rewire it all.   // What if one red light could’ve rewired it all? We are aware of the risks but proceed accordingly. It is the [...]

Poems

From Crossing Two Rivers

13 There’s more that could be said about these things besides your love and if she saw you now aiming to pin down the grind and pay your share. Her ready leisure once when she knew you and her eyes were open on the sandy rug behind the jade screen still makes you smile. Surely, [...]

Poems

Virus

Finally you convince me to take that road trip west toward the bight and some perspective, firm in your belief that if illness is an enemy it gives away its weak point like any structure under stress. There are many ways to win or lose hearts and wars — we know this; we weaponise our [...]

Poems

a story

or to go to the end of the line where you talk about manuals   and present tense, say that   afterparties and quarterback mondays the whole thing happens thrillingly   as required. tuesdays (i don’t say there are never irrelevancies)   and when i say perfect of course i mean flawed in the most [...]

Poems

turkey vulture quiz

when turkey vultures are threatened, they vomit play dead razzle dazzle   turkey vultures locate carrion by leaving no trace in that way positive thinking smell   the turkey vulture uses ___ to stay soaring the hob-heeled fist of chance thermals and updrafts various bribes and official oversight   turkey vultures pee on themselves to [...]

Poems

What Do Our Bathrooms Do After We Leave?

The room emptied itself of the water fallen off my tan and testicles, letting it run askew around islets of black sperms.   In the drunken lane outside, signboards carry arrows unused by the passer-by, the roads the directions point to             have long un-laid themselves to the sylvan past.   A Stonehenge of hands rose [...]

Poems

Blindness

Sir Blindness gropes through the House of Bluebird, insisting ‘I am perfectly nice!’ Wanting an urn for the oak leaf’s smoke, or a follower to polish mirrors, Blindness is all smiles.   Spurned, he tweets like a child, his threads unravel wilder, wilder: ‘The centre of my sinful earth, poor soul.’ To generate tenderness Blindness [...]

Poems

In The Navy

In the Navy i.m. Stuart Addison, Stephen Bebbington, Jake Casey, Brett Dwyer, Ewen McDonald   I’m hung by my feet over the stern; the propellor’s a sort of halo, my heels Morse hell’s unfeelingness, the boatswains’ eyes are clogged with ice.   The propellor’s a sort of halo I must serve, must serve, must serve. [...]

Poems

Begging Bowls

Collect as many bowls as possible: from market stalls, junk shops, jumble sales, friends, anywhere. Made of any material: metal, wood, plastic, ceramic or wicker. They shouldn’t be too ornate and preferably be between 10 and 30 cms in diameter. Then do three things with these bowls on three successive days. Day one Choose a [...]

Poems

Work Series

Some Joke The joke is fading down from red to pink as a woman I remember from years ago limps past. Whatever happened to her husband? Either ‘some’ or ‘real’. Not sure which one dominates. Though there’s a contrast in the square, why always a square? One half was easier than the other. But again [...]

Poems

ABM (All Bout Money)

A jacket screams way past those sighs and chugs of corner anoraks circling.   Another muffled shunt means outstretched arms and worried end.   Any needless kick at something sawing repairs a sort of cough somewhere.   Behind an unknown wall a glance at yawning denim across the street.   Blood just one stays on [...]

Poems

Narita

Carp in the Emperor’s pond swim slowly with open mouths, swallowing clouds.

Poems

On the Loch

Every Friday after work, we feed the Loch Ness Monster, who purrs to shore, slinking through water.   We picnic in our grey daily gear, graze on fish ‘n’ chips, and chew over futures rare as Jurassic snapshot.   We ignore the signs – Please don’t feed into the myth – to hand Nessie hot [...]

Interview

Interview: Martin Duwell

Martin Duwell is one of our most prolific critics of Australian poetry and publishes a review every month on his widely-read blog, Australian Poetry Review. In this interview, poet and Foam:e editor Carmen Leigh Keates asks Duwell about his writing, his reading, and how poetry – and the reading of poetry – has changed during [...]

Reviews

Review: Three snapshots from UWA – The Criminal Re-Register, Ross Gibson; The Tiny Museums, Carolyn Abbs; Hush: A Fugue, Dominique Hecq

48Snapshot 1. Ross Gibson, The Criminal Re-Register (UWA, 2017) Continuing on his years-long excavation of Sydney’s psycho-geography, Ross Gibson constantly tests the capacities of the genres available to us as story-tellers. Each offering defies easy categorisation. Reviews of The Summer Exercises (2009) deemed it more prose poetry than novel, so here he is, nestled in [...]

Reviews

Review: Of its gilt edges and evident fanfare – Glass, Rose Hunter

Of its gilt edges and evident fanfare   Glass Rose Hunter Five Islands Press, 2017 Review by Angela Gardner Although Rose Hunter is the author of three previous poetry books and a chapbook published in the U.S.A. this is her first book to be published in her home country of Australia. Glass, published by Five [...]

Reviews

Review: ‘A body full of organs’ – Soap, Charlotte Guest

‘A body full of organs’   Soap Charlotte Guest Recent Work Press, Canberra 2017 Review by Angela Gardner I was intrigued by the title, thinking immediately of the Francis Ponge book of the same name (Le Savon, 1967). Ponge is known as the ‘poet of things’ believing that “a mind in search of ideas should [...]

Reviews

Review: INCARNATION IS NO BURDEN – Music Our Bodies Can’t Hold, Andy Jackson

INCARNATION IS NO BURDEN Music Our Bodies Can’t Hold – by Andy Jackson (Hunter Contemporary Australian Poets) Review by Carmen Leigh Keates   In my early twenties, I moved, for a short time, around the peripheries of the local conservatorium’s social circles, where my friend was dating a concert pianist who was attracting excited attention. [...]

Reviews

Review: ALL THE OLD DUDES All that Wasted Heat, Jonathan Hadwen

ALL THE OLD DUDES All that Wasted Heat – Jonathan Hadwen (Vine Leaves Press, 2017)   Review by Carmen Leigh Keates This short book of vignettes is dedicated to, along with the author’s partner, the Brisbane suburb of New Farm. This is an area that I know intimately. The men’s hostels that are given so [...]

Editorial

Issue 15 Editorial by Angela Gardner and Carmen Leigh Keates

Welcome to the fifteenth edition of foam:e and our wonderful new look! We’re already getting accolades from our authors so a huge thank you and shout out to Maria from Intermingle in Perth for designing the new site and getting it up and running including getting all the past Issues loaded onto the new site. This [...]

Reviews

Review: The perfect balance between grace and power – The Collected Poems of Fay Zwicky, Ed. Lucy Dougan & Tim Dolin

The perfect balance between grace and power                              The Collected Poems of Fay Zwicky      Edited and introduced by Lucy Dougan & Tim Dolin. UWAP 2018 Reviewed by Jena Woodhouse   Although the title of this review is taken from Zwicky’s poem “Growing Up”, it does not adequately encapsulate the sheer vitality and [...]

Reviews

Review: to sing the song back to our land, Fume, Phillip Hall

to sing the song back to our land   Fume by Phillip Hall UWA Publishing, 104pp   Review by Angela Gardner       “A patriot is one who wrestles for the soul of her country as she wrestles for her own being” (Adrienne Rich ‘An Atlas of the Difficult World’ 1981)   Fume is [...]