This selection, chosen by guest editor nat raum, is from Dogwitch by Catherine Rockwood (Bottlecap Press, 2025).
Familiar
It does not always have to drink your blood.
It can be a live thing watching
what you honor, what you defile.
A live thing arriving
through alleys and weedy cover,
bringing a moon in its mouth.
Its own hunter still
but satisfied
with your choices:
the nest you will make for it
out of plucked silk and holly.
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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