This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Familiar by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (Madhouse Press 2024).
When least expected,
magic twines legs like
a cat. Or was it always
here, and by averting
eyes from the shadow,
I missed its shine? Or
did A strike it from my
flint-like limbs? Either
way,21 its song fills every
room, and I only have
to notice what catches
in my throat when
I lift voice in return.
____________
21“It is not that something different is seen, but that one
sees differently. It is as though the spatial act of seeing were
changed by a new dimension,” Carl Jung.
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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