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).

It’s Easier These Days

At least, in our apartment.
Outside, maybe not. Seems
men can’t stand what won’t
come when called, snarl as
pace quickens. Sure, clubs
are no longer raided, red

light urging, Hurry—switch
partners. And we can make
yearly pilgrimages to towns
that spawned us, avoiding
truck-stop bathrooms along
the way. But it’s provisional

grace, mouths fags once we
clear the porch. And those
who guilt, Come home, never
saw that slip of sand where,
naked except fog, we swim
under a rusty Golden bow.

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.