The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: you stupid slut by nat raum

This selection, chosen by guest editor Jillian Fantin, is from you stupid slut by nat raum, released by Dreamy Boy Book Club in 2022.

in the interest of transparency

i’m not a good person. before i knew my body kept a calendar of its own, i made a habit of smoking a cigarette or two inside my apartment if i was really drunk, usually only if the february midnight wept ice outside my open window and i was feeling lonely because the guy i was sexting every night brought his girlfriend to my after-party. in the photos, i look just like my reflection in a vacant storefront, our shared emptiness far from all that a dusty pane of glass and i have in common.

am i opaque as plate glass when i affix my eyes to the lowered curlicues across the rug and count back one year in my memory to stealing away in someone else’s car to catonsville, two years to blacking out, and three to the same as the second but much more reckless and much less lazy? is now my chance to purge before my contact list is full of ghosts i mistake for gods and my body is full of tequila or cheap beer or pink moscato and infectious diseases? i don’t believe in prayer, but is it all right to wonder if i need it anyway?

nat raum (b. 1996) is a disabled artist, writer, and genderless disaster from Baltimore, MD. They have a BFA in photography from Maryland Institute College of Art and are a current MFA candidate at the University of Baltimore. They are also 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 photography publications.

Jillian A. Fantin is a writer with roots in the American South and north central England. They are a 2023 Sundress Publications Editorial Intern, a 2021 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poet Fellow, and a 2020 Jefferson County Memorial Project Research Fellow. With writer Joy Wilkoff, they co-founded and edit RENESME LITERARY. Jillian’s debut chapbook, A Playdough Symposium, will be released this coming summer from Ghost City Press, and more of their writing appears in American Journal of Poetry, Homology Lit, Tilted House, Spectra Poets, Barrelhouse, and poetry.onl, among others.