The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Mud in Our Mouths by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from Mud in Our Mouths by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (Northwestern University Press, 2025).

In the Produce Section of
Super Walmart, Union City, TN

No parsley, broccolini, or scallions,

but a plethora of camo—woodland,

real tree, mossy oak, the rare desert—

so I fill my cart with anything fresh,

head to a checkout where they sell

Marlboro Lights for your mom. And

you wait in the car—between a van

emblazoned with a country that wages

war on its police must make peace

with its criminals and a motorcycle

flying the Betsy Ross—as I unload

a wilted garden onto the belt behind

jerky and cartons and, beyond glass

doors, see the child you were—curls

crushed under a cap, slumped down

in the seat. Barely here. Almost gone.

Luiza Flynn-Goodlett is the author of Mud in Our Mouths (Northwestern University Press, 2025) and Look Alive (Cowles Poetry Book Prize, Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2021), along with numerous chapbooks, most recently Lossland (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press). Her poetry can be found in Fugue, Poetry Northwest, Third Coast, and elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for the Whiting Award–winning LGBTQIA2S+ literary journal and press Foglifter.

Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry, Puerto del Sol, ANMLY, Fruitslice, among others. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium, Poets House, and Sundress Publications. When they are not writing or editing, Merrick loves to serve as a pillow for their cat, Kitten, while getting lost in new worlds written by other dreamers. Merrick is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.