This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Familiar by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (Madhouse Press 2024).
I dream a night forest4—
leaves lit by the moon
as bats flit above—mud
splattered calves burn,
but a light glows ahead,
so I follow until I stand
at the edge of a clearing,
watch myself—younger,
but clearly me—crouch
before a fire, feed clothes
worn that day to flames.
For a moment, her eyes
flick up, and she sees us5—
mice in glue, still stuck
here where it happened.
____________
4 “Night is coming, when no one has the power to work,” John
9:1–17.
5 “My delicate firebrand-darlings,” Hopkins, Discovery of Witches.
Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (she/her) 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 Ninth Letter, swamp pink, Poetry Northwest, and
elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for the Whiting Award–winning LGBTQIA2S+ literary journal and press Foglifter. She was raised in the wilds of Tennessee and now lives in the SF Bay Area with her wife and rescue dog.
Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere.
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