4X2
an online poetry journal
Photo by Melissa Hotchkiss
Gas Guzzle
by Henry Goldkamp
I been drinking, on National Yelling Day, raising hell
and justice for all, litotes and hutzpah for oil, whatever the hell.
Sentimental backwash: This city, built on jetty sediment and spray.
My shrimp wrists wilt limp with decadence. I pray for the hell of it.
I soil my southern diaper. Wait for god to change me. To baptize
my red tide. These, my fish lungs on drugs. This, my earth on hell.
Blackflies kiss silverfish. Goldfish grow feet. To each their own ecosystem.
Get head from snapping turtles. Go down on mollusk meat. Give em hell.
Serpentine pallets flicker my gland of planet. Eat a dick. Eat a bible. Eat acid
rain in sheets. Hear the gulf purr its hellcats. Beat its hounds of hell.
All wells break loose. Take a match to the bubbles of my mind. The two
holes I see out on fire. Some problems fix themselves. Like hell, they do.
I sip rotgut. I piss redeye. Shut the sunroof on my shoebox. Blackout my star
-smeared nadir. Lot lizards barter their globular warmth. Misery loves industry to hell
and back. Come hell or deepwater horizons. Two choices: orchestration or
castration. My vanishing point nears. My blood is drawn. No chance in hell.
I hit the pump (I have a heart of Goldkamp)—an angel gets her hairless tail.
Pay cash: it wags. Pay credit: Please come inside. Why how do you do. Hello.
Precious Metal
by Henry Goldkamp
After Holy Water Font by Unknown Silversmith,
ca. 1750-1800
I
of a big God in polish.
There is a drip to our French
beau jest. Us common fish
mete gods in need of polish.
We swim in kitsch,
flounder insignia, drench
a big God in polish.
There is a drip to our French.
II
Save your silver. We prefer gold.
Flowers grown from metal
outdo flowers who droop and fold.
Save your silver. We prefer gold
embers ashed in bowls. Holes
dug in holy water fill with hell.
Save your silver. We prefer gold
flowers grown from metal.
III
In the fame of the dada,
sun, and the wholly spit out.
Ow and fur heaver. La-la-la.
In flames, dada
pardons all French: Voilà!
[Cue droplets vanished by drought
the same way do dada,
sun, and the wholly spit out.]
Poet's Statement: "Gas Guzzle": I've no Middle Eastern heritage, and thus really no business playing with the ghazal form, but as the initial sketches of this poem turned towards the pejoratives of crude oil, it made sense to Americanize (corrupt) the shit out of a dignified, ancient form due to the nature of the cont(in)ent. I'll never write another ghazal again.
"Precious Metal": This ekphrastic tri-triolet is based on a piece that is on the second floor of NOMA currently (go up the marble steps, turn right, first room on your left). Sacrilege aside, I really can't stand it, and have many times fantasized about lighting up a smoke and ashing in it; it's an ugly silver, and I'm totally a gold guy, as my surname has fatefully carved for me. It's one saving grace (ahem) is how worn down the thing is—makes me think of all those poor dead souls who dipped their fingers into its waters, criss-crossed applesauced in the name of the Trinity. It'd be interesting to hang out with them sometime, somehow.
For sentimental reasons, I did recently install a holy water font in my house by the front door.
Bio: Henry Goldkamp lives in New Orleans. Recent work appears in Indiana Review, Diagram, South Carolina Review, and Notre Dame Review. His public art projects have been covered by Time and NPR.