pass how can i i myself
                       the sound pass the stocking
                              shimmies the thigh-like
                               beige slug of love pass
                           being the noise of neon
               as it knees through gold lock
        wig past the scrape of mascara
         thinned until its clumps tease
        away pass as in a topaz ticket
   of play-pretense i’m a port privy
    to barnacles & my own personal
            clam-scent in lieu of loveboat
         docking the shiny lime of night’s
         tonic to lip the rim coolly elixired
            to offer a 20 gander at gender &
                 this done-up eye slides right on
           through this hoop earring of giants
                       thrill of nightlife passing me bi
                    -o round trip i want to fly forever

 

 

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HENRY GOLDKAMP lives in New Orleans, where he co-runs The Splice Poetry Series, acts as intermedia editor for the small press Tilted House, and teaches rhetoric at Louisiana State University. Art and criticism appear in Indiana Review, Best New Poets 2021, Denver Quarterly, Seneca Review, Accelerants, Volt, TriQuarterly, Tyger Quarterly, Bat City Review (winner of the 2022 Hybrid Prize), Afternoon Visitor, DIAGRAM, Landfill, and Annulet, among others. His public art projects have been covered by NPR’s Morning Edition and Time and he was recently an artist-in-residence at Mary Sky in Vermont.

 

The art that appears alongside this piece is by AMY RENEE WEBB.