Nat Raha
Chantel’s Room
after Je, Tu, Il, Elle
i.
mono
chromes & sugar / not
metaphors us. pro
saic slow tones, isolate
,, corress
pond spines inert expo
sure , wall
-s as bare as we might be, turquoise
a remembrance / tints recoded ,
diminish
by her navel dines &
curves further our queer hips, does not
let inaction take our flesh away
singular-us. fuzz, you water
,
slows thought’s vault & pace
.share
arms in the room we witness
, the work of this (again)
small tunes we feed to each
ii.
negations of hitch, the inert
clearing momentary
as despair as activity the
moving skin tau[gh]t
to pailing rib-
decage, the daily fabric felled between
petrol-separations & the thought that sung the
poem of friends
& the men they have blown for wages, we
are against the criminal in itself––
of all alcohol & the wind break cinematics
motorways , european stairwells,
tuned décor, demo-seismics
of wanting on friends / fucking
playful , write again to how we des-
ire such fleshes shift spacing
remembered, bodies our / throws
daylight on woodwork smile dropping off
Nat Raha is a poet and trans / queer activist, living in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her poetry includes two collections countersonnets (Contraband Books, 2013) and Octet (Veer Books, 2010); and numerous pamphlets including ‘de/compositions’ (Enjoy Your Homes Press, 2017), '£/€xtinctions' (sociopathetic distro, 2017), '[of sirens / body & faultlines]' (Veer Books, 2015) and 'mute exterior intimate' (Oystercatcher Press, 2013). She's performed and published her work internationally. Nat co-edited the Radical Transfeminism zine, and is currently finishing PhD in on queer Marxism and contemporary poetry at the University of Sussex.