back to when the earth, the sun, the stars all aligned…
okay, no more hilary duff for now. salt box is the first chapbook i ever wrote, and while it’s undergone a lot of changes since i wrote its first poems, it still holds a very dear place in my heart.
salt box traces longing and desire across the course of three baltimore winters. the first winter is when i drafted most of these poems—at the time, i was in an abusive relationship that had isolated me from the rest of my life, and found myself longing for connection. the second winter, i wrote more about desire, as a new partnership began to blossom. the third winter saw the temporary dissolution of this partnership, as well as the chapbook entering the form it’s currently in.
maryland weather is something else—maybe that’s why the changing of seasons in baltimore inspires something in me. but i’ve also considered the fact that i spent a lot of childhood in isolation, and that i was born in the winter, and maybe that’s why the emptiness of baltimore winters hold this space within me.
praise
An intimate tangle of sense and memories, salt box by nat raum brings out the inner longing in readers through endless screenshots of want. From the desire “constant like flies in the summertime,” there is a grittiness in the words raum presents— an earthiness that lingers in the mind pages after reading. Though written on seemingly ordinary interactions with the world, raum’s inner feelings add depth and tenderness to the stanzas, invoking dimensions of interpretation that otherwise go unnoticed. Through “scarlet fantasies [&] sangria dreams,” every color, every object, and every person has significance in this stunning coming-of-age collection.
— Saturn Browne, author of BLOODPATHS (Kith Books 2023)
The poems in nat raum's salt box are romantic, enraptured. And when I say romantic, I mean both the contemporary vernacular use and also the interchange between environment and self that so defined the romantic lyric, and in these poems, offers a new frame for that eternal form. Here, those two energies burn together, softly, tenderly, and one can feel that the speaker in these poems longs for a body that can merge with the earth, while also intrinsically and physically connected to the beloved that traverses across many of these poems. Across ‘salt box’'s pages, desire is tinged irrevocably with physicality, a grounding that brings a speaker back to the visceral, away from the bodiless place above us: "i / fall as i would down a well; / the prick of thorns / as my fingers unspool / from your violet rose is the / last of your touch / before i crumple / into earth. Hold these poems close to your chest, while feeling grounded to the earth, or astrally projecting among the stars.
— Addie Tsai, author of Dear Twin and Unwieldy Creatures
nat raum’s salt box is a great title, evocative as it is of the ubiquitous Baltimore cold weather utility that colors the city’s more pallid months. But it’s also something of a misnomer: there is salt within these pages, borne of the Himalayas and of precious gems perspired, but the book itself is a sense box. When citric acid hits the winter-split cracks in the writer’s mouth, it reminds as much of salt in the wound as the feeling of the poet’s appetite for love and sensations across the spectrum. If dried whiskey leaves a stain, so too will raum’s lines of spring dreams and dead trees and the fear between those forests. The light may not find you, but salt box will. No matter if you’re three inches or 3000 miles from their lyrical Baltimore, raum’s words will make you feel like you’re in that box, feeling every feeling.
— Andrew Daugherty, writer + editor
selected works
you can find selected pieces from this book published in the following places:
“the light won’t find you” in Saving Daylight Zine, Issue 2: Stir Crazy
“ghost town” in Delicate Friend, Issue 3: Earthsong
“sour cherry” in Bulb Culture Collective
“fool’s spring” in Lavender Lime Literary, Issue 1: Slaked
“inane bubbliness” and “labradorite” in Violet Indigo Blue, Etc.’s Lux folio
“dried whiskey” in Dollar Store Magazine, Issue 3: Leftovers, But Make Them Cozy
“chaos meets eros”, “is this it?”, “deep space”, and “what the body grasps” in Bullshit Lit
salt box can be purchased from kith books in print and digital format.