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Poetry

bathroom stall as a red room or a prayer closet

may you hunt me like a standoff of village

bathroom stall as a red room or a prayer closet
Photo by Tom Rogerson / Unsplash

by nat raum

first:    may you hunt me like a standoff of village
      witch and pitchforked mercenary, swaying
      in perpetually touchless waltz. slide
      behind me and crack the top off my steel
      trap’s hisses and pops, until i hum high
      enough notes and parade girl so He[1] & Them
      & Everyone Everyone Knows can hear[2].

second:    may you hunt me like we’re twenty-somethings
      in a famine of all things sensual. pretend
      we’re kids and you’re trembling when you
      think of grazing my waistband with coaxing
      fingertips. give me more than hardened red
      clay from the soil i dredge. ruin me with just
      the foresight of your grasp.

third:    may you hunt me like you know what
      you’re really after, the gristle of hurt i hide
      away that makes me so midwest emo
      without the midwest. just for you, i’ll let you
      close enough to pluck the barbs
      out of my insides.

  1. inspired by Rachael Crosbie/tommy blake’s "Him" in Peanut [the cat] Auditions as Courage [...from Courage the Cowardly Dog] ↩︎

  2. inspired by Mirandy July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know ↩︎

nat raum (b. 1996) is a disabled artist, writer, and genderless disaster from Baltimore, MD. They’re a current MFA candidate and also the editor-in-chief of fifth wheel press. Past publishers of their work include Delicate Friend, perhappened, Corporeal Lit, and trampset. Find them online: natraum.com/links.

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