praise you
— After the Fatboy Slim song of the same name
i have to celebrate you, baby, body of mine
i’ve never much cared for but lately feel
hell-bent on cradling in the supple sublime
of trans joy. our first two decades were written
by the world that reared you, by the grasp
every jack-rodgers-vineyard-vines classmate
had on your baby brainstem. it would be easy
enough to say you’re not woman after all that
but twice as hard to admit there is any ounce
of the masculine in your bloodstream after every
man you knew was elated to enlarge you like
a projection, circle each spot that made you less
than flawless femme. how lucky we are now
to settle for and into nothing, dive headlong
into the void where gender goes to dissolve.
prose poem with hard edges
— cw: sexual assault, abuse
nat raum (b. 1996) is a disabled artist, writer, and genderless disaster based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They hold a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from the University of Baltimore. They’re the editor-in-chief of fifth wheel press and the author of you stupid slut, the abyss is staring back, random access memory, and several chapbooks and photobooks. Find them online at natraum.com.