This selection, chosen by guest editor nat raum, is from Dogwitch by Catherine Rockwood (Bottlecap Press, 2025).
Ode to Meanness
You dig a pit for the thought she never would
and kick that thought into it.
Now. There go the lights
snapping on in minds that overlooked you
secure in thinking they’d explained your place
and you had to agree.
What have you done? At first it’s disappointment
but soon the pain will hit and they’ll be angry.
The tool they thought you would consent to be
sticks out from their ribs. It’s making way
with a happy little wiggle, broadening
the outlet for its
point.
Oh, how could you?
Like this. Like you’ve stayed hungry,
cutting your pads on glass, all on your lonesome
since the day boss said “you’re a good girl,
we’ll get to that tomorrow.”
Moderation
is what was spoken of:
too bad for them they didn’t note the green
coming over your vision like a scrim
of moderately-now-I’ll-burn-your-farm.
O, Meanness! Generations
of dirt-wall cellars and the rusted nail
inside loose shingle rise to your clenched fists.
The bone-marked cur that mauls
the well-fed hand now looks to you
with frightening devotion.
These six feet
that you’ll be buried in are your old home
and room enough
to bring proud towers down.
Catherine Rockwood (she/they) lives near Boston. She reads and edits for Reckoning Magazine. Two of Catherine’s poetry chapbooks, Endeavors To Obtain Perpetual Motion and And We Are Far From Shore: Poems for Our Flag Means Death, are available from The Ethel Zine Press. Their third chapbook, Dogwitch, is available from Bottlecap Press. They are wrangling a long full-length poetry manuscript — or perhaps two shorter manuscripts — who knows? Up with mystery!
nat raum (b. 1996) is a queer disabled artist, writer, and editor based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They hold an MFA from the University of Baltimore and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Past and upcoming publishers of their work include Poet Lore, beestung, Baltimore Beat, Split Lip Magazine, BRUISER, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.
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