national bohemian, renegade poet laureate of baltimore city

by nat raum


make me poet laureate of this fucking city already.


because who else has even attempted

to translate it so kindly despite how


much it’s dirt it’s thrown on me? who else’s ego

death is buried under the shot tower in a 40


of boh? i wanted out, you know, when a garden suburb

was all i knew and the air was stale


with old money—and that’s not to say that now

i don’t look more than respectfully at philly


or the south of france sometimes. i stayed;

i learned fifty-seven new kinds of drunk and hurt.


my guts now feel like raisins after half a beer.

who else can trace the cracks in every midtown dive


ceiling without looking? whose blood is one

with the concrete outside, but mine?


nat raum (b. 1996) is a disabled artist, writer, and genderless disaster based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They’re the editor-in-chief of fifth wheel press and the author of this book will not save youthe abyss is staring backrandom access memory, and others. Past and upcoming publishers of their writing include Gone LawnSplit Lip MagazineAllium, and BRUISER. Find them online at natraum.com.