The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Lone Yellow Flower by Erika Gill

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor EMDASH and Managing Editor Merrick Sloane, is from Lone Yellow Flower by Erika Gill (Querencia Press 2025).

Romantic Notions

Funny, that it is considered romantic to declare
that you would die for love.
Living for love is much harder to do.

Erika Gill (they/them) lives on unceded Tséstho’e (Cheyenne), Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, hinono’eino’ biito’owu’ (Arapaho), and Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute) land in Denver. Erika is Editor in Chief of Alternative Milk Magazine. Their poetry appears in Rigorous, MORIA, beestung and others. Their debut collection of poetry, Lone Yellow Flower, is available now from Querencia Press.

EMDASH a.k.a Emily Lu Gao (高璐璐) (she/they) is a poet-who-also-writes-fiction, educator, and daughter of Chinese immigrants. She writes to heal, grow, and decolonize. They’ve received support from LAMBDA, McCormack Writing Center, Sundress Publications, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, The Chinese American Museum of LA, Jersey City Arts Council and more. She has learned as much from community organizing and open mics as she did from her Rutgers-Newark MFA in Poetry. They’re published in Poetry Northwest, ANMLY, Alocasia, Underblong and elsewhere. She proudly hosted, produced, and curated The Word Bookstore Open Mic for two years.

Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. A 2026 Best of the Net and 2025 AWP Intro Journal Awards winner, Merrick’s poetry appears in citizen trans* {project}, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. 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.