Bio
Philip Hammial has had 30 poetry collections published. His poems have appeared in 31 poetry anthologies (in seven countries) & in 120 journals in fifteen countries. He has represented Australia at fourteen international poetry festivals, most recently at Poetry Africa 2016 in Durban, SA. In 2009/10 he was the Australian writer-in-residence for six months at the Cité International des Arts in Paris.
Philip Hammial
Tabloid
My mother? I'm wearing her as tight as I can, as
I always have in that house of religious purpose. Some
purpose, Death for a laugh when in fact
it's an exercise in cross-dressing taken to a conga line
length, a Golden Mile of would-be starlets scratching & tearing
until they're through to the other side, to: Zenshin
A-rippu kosu (a full-body A-lip course), Yoko shouting
Yam sentence! Yam sentence! while I swallow my pride
& get on with it. Note: when Yoko roars yours
truly a tumble in the hay takes with Betty, full-blooded
American girl, just to get back. Spiteful bastard, O just
to get back I do, I do. What Yoko deserves, her cupboard
far from bare, her rendezvous with the wall-eyed assassin
on the Street of the Unhorsed Imam, her commercial plight
with legs to match, her horde of urine in bedside bottles, her moth-
eaten collection of beaver tails. I'm thinking of wearing her too.