Henry Goldkamp
from Spill Life With Hammerspace
For as long as societies and economies are inexorably limited in their growth, bound to agrarian
cycles of famine and plenty, and incapable of generating the surplus necessary to finance the
development of industry, the deflection of surplus wealth into luxury and display represents an
authentic destruction of goods, a sheer squandering of resources whose bounds cannot be increased.
—Norman Bryson's "Abundance," Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting
8
some people suppose puns
the lowest form of wit because bawk-bawk because
it provokes an idea to be split
like a banana deployed into a current
of language that flavors a certain
linear directionality—left to right
top to bottom—into looking toward
multiple directions and tasting profiles
it kind of jumps into and lays down
in the street and stops traffic
105
just the other day i was feeding a certain coyote
bbq rotisserie chicken from my hands
scarfing, it made that wet dog mouth sound
like so
110
those stop signs are
verdant as fuck
Henry Goldkamp lives in New Orleans, where he teaches clown and cartoon at Louisiana State University, hosts the reading series Splice, edits intermedia for Tilted House, and acts as communications director of the New Orleans Poetry Festival. He is the author of Not My Circus (Ursus Americanus, 2025), JOY BUZZER: A Clown Show (Ricochet Editions, 2025), and Balloon Animal (Cloak, 2026). More at henrygoldkamp.com.
For as long as societies and economies are inexorably limited in their growth, bound to agrarian
cycles of famine and plenty, and incapable of generating the surplus necessary to finance the
development of industry, the deflection of surplus wealth into luxury and display represents an
authentic destruction of goods, a sheer squandering of resources whose bounds cannot be increased.
—Norman Bryson's "Abundance," Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting
8
some people suppose puns
the lowest form of wit because bawk-bawk because
it provokes an idea to be split
like a banana deployed into a current
of language that flavors a certain
linear directionality—left to right
top to bottom—into looking toward
multiple directions and tasting profiles
it kind of jumps into and lays down
in the street and stops traffic
105
just the other day i was feeding a certain coyote
bbq rotisserie chicken from my hands
scarfing, it made that wet dog mouth sound
like so
110
those stop signs are
verdant as fuck
Henry Goldkamp lives in New Orleans, where he teaches clown and cartoon at Louisiana State University, hosts the reading series Splice, edits intermedia for Tilted House, and acts as communications director of the New Orleans Poetry Festival. He is the author of Not My Circus (Ursus Americanus, 2025), JOY BUZZER: A Clown Show (Ricochet Editions, 2025), and Balloon Animal (Cloak, 2026). More at henrygoldkamp.com.