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.

amber ale whirlpools

content warning for sexual assault

inside my ribs live a colony
of yellowjackets, milling in lungs
as deep gold barley malt splashes
in the plastic pitcher you and i slide

across the divots where brass placards
came unglued from the blue laminate.
the swarm grows wrathful with each
ricochet of their bodies off soft tissue.

ii.

i counted eighteen hours
since i’d wished i stumbled
out of bed to photograph
your body in chiaroscuro

as the sun rose. rolling the
tape inside closed eyelids, i saw
amber glow through cylinder glass.
i saw plaster ceiling,

zig-zag cotton
sheets. i felt the graze
of hands searching
hills and folds

between
my legs,
stuck shut
and swollen.

iii.

i don’t know a love that hasn’t said no, don’t you dare
open your jaw so wide the hive within you escapes. the more
venom my body takes on, the closer these stinging pests
i couldn’t hope to control any longer creep up my throat and

out my mouth the moment my lips part. how naive of me to think
a pleading brow was enough to merit your mercy. i could fill your cup
to the top if heaving sobs weren’t the least desirable thing about me
and i beg my larynx to lock before it causes trouble, like in nightmares

when i scream and no amount of strain makes a sound. nothing you’ve
done weighs as much as one of my no please i’m anxious i’m not okay
please stop please hold me please and i’m still far too heavy to float
with you. if i’m smaller and quieter, maybe i’ll grow lighter.

i have to serve what’s ordered to guarantee satisfaction. and i have
to be close to you right now even though my throat
is holding tight to the words i actually
need. i have to.

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.