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.


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.


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).

       Grandmother’s Body

To me, buttoned
to the throat, neat

as curio shelves
with a miniature

Eiffel Tower, pins
shaped like sheep,

but it wasn’t always
so—photo albums

evidence another
that held to light

like stained glass,
asked daughter-in-law,

Don’t you just
find men repulsive?

and didn’t laugh
because it wasn’t

a joke. Cleaning
out the condo, we

unfold that body
from a shoebox—

so silky, she slips
from our hands.

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.


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).

                 Perseids Season

First, a new barber finds a gap in my hairline

from the fall—not a scar exactly, just my skull

holding its breath. Next, a burner left on—in its

rotten cloud, I peer down the garbage disposal’s

throat, then bless summer for windows left open.

Later, almost underfoot, a lobster-sized crawfish

lifts a claw, sidles under rocks. Tonight, Earth

wrecks asteroids on her fontanel. She shatters

time to light and, when her wife runs a thumb

along its milky trail, turns to kiss her wrist.

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.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Girlhood x A Haunting by Jessica Rae Bergamino

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from Girlhood x A Haunting by Jessica Rae Bergamino (Driftwood Press, 2025).

                                                  Strange Instructions

Nancy has faced  many mysteries,  but  her  body remains  the biggest
one. She draws off her  sweater, ignoring the shivers that  trample her
through.  She  examines  her  breasts  in  the mirror, holding  them up
and out, wondering at their weight in her  small  hands.  How strange,
she  thinks  coolly, how unlike herself! She bends down to watch them
hang, presses her fingers into  the crease of her stomach. She still isn’t
what  her  father  wants her  to be,  is still covered in soft dark fur. She
drops  her skirt to the floor and  studies the way her thighs give rise to
her hips, how  bird-pecked they are,  how frightening.  How strange to
see clearly where she ends and begins, to understand where she opens
and  how she closes.  To feel  that even this can  be solved. She lets out
a long, high wail that shakes the windows in their sills.

Jessica Rae Bergamino (she/her) is an award-winning queer femme writer and teaching artist who makes her home on the lands of the Coast Salish and Duwamish peoples, known by settlers as Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Girlhood x a Haunting (Driftwood Press, 2025), UNMANNED (Noemi Books, 2018) and chapbooks from Sundress Publications and dancing girl press. She earned her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing with a Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies from the University of Utah, where she held Steffenson-Cannon and Francis Camoin fellowships. Her writing has received support from Hedgebrook, Mineral School, The Community of Writers, and the Taft-NIcholson Center for the Humanities.

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.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Girlhood x A Haunting by Jessica Rae Bergamino

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from Girlhood x A Haunting by Jessica Rae Bergamino (Driftwood Press, 2025).


Two memories stitched from fiction.

One is a girl-shaped doll made from husks and skins and stains and spit.

The other is dead because [I] murdered her.

Jessica Rae Bergamino (she/her) is an award-winning queer femme writer and teaching artist who makes her home on the lands of the Coast Salish and Duwamish peoples, known by settlers as Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Girlhood x a Haunting (Driftwood Press, 2025), UNMANNED (Noemi Books, 2018) and chapbooks from Sundress Publications and dancing girl press. She earned her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing with a Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies from the University of Utah, where she held Steffenson-Cannon and Francis Camoin fellowships. Her writing has received support from Hedgebrook, Mineral School, The Community of Writers, and the Taft-NIcholson Center for the Humanities.

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.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Girlhood x A Haunting by Jessica Rae Bergamino

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from Girlhood x A Haunting by Jessica Rae Bergamino (Driftwood Press, 2025).


She’s  been  told  she  shouldn’t speak  until  spoken to, but  her body
aches with brittle noise. Something curves  through her, undoing the
voice from  the corners of  her mouth. It must be a ghost!,  her father
teases over dinner, reaching for his daughter’s cheek. Stopping short.

Jessica Rae Bergamino (she/her) is an award-winning queer femme writer and teaching artist who makes her home on the lands of the Coast Salish and Duwamish peoples, known by settlers as Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Girlhood x a Haunting (Driftwood Press, 2025), UNMANNED (Noemi Books, 2018) and chapbooks from Sundress Publications and dancing girl press. She earned her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing with a Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies from the University of Utah, where she held Steffenson-Cannon and Francis Camoin fellowships. Her writing has received support from Hedgebrook, Mineral School, The Community of Writers, and the Taft-NIcholson Center for the Humanities.

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.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Girlhood x A Haunting by Jessica Rae Bergamino

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from Girlhood x A Haunting by Jessica Rae Bergamino (Driftwood Press, 2025).

             [[[

            


              I imagine how we slip in and out of one another,

                                                                                                      untested as ammunition.

                                       Parallel lines drawn yellow on the same unmapped road.

                        There is a you I remember and a me I forget.

                                                        One day, everyone will love you.

                               & me?
                                                 I rock your chin in my cradle and squeeze.

                  


                ]]]

Jessica Rae Bergamino (she/her) is an award-winning queer femme writer and teaching artist who makes her home on the lands of the Coast Salish and Duwamish peoples, known by settlers as Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Girlhood x a Haunting (Driftwood Press, 2025), UNMANNED (Noemi Books, 2018) and chapbooks from Sundress Publications and dancing girl press. She earned her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing with a Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies from the University of Utah, where she held Steffenson-Cannon and Francis Camoin fellowships. Her writing has received support from Hedgebrook, Mineral School, The Community of Writers, and the Taft-NIcholson Center for the Humanities.

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.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Girlhood x A Haunting by Jessica Rae Bergamino

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from Girlhood x A Haunting by Jessica Rae Bergamino (Driftwood Press, 2025).

                               [[[

            


I unburied myself from the echo of her, carved girl flesh from her lemon rind breath.

Trance of bone, my body is as pure as fiction –

                  


                                                                           ]]]

Jessica Rae Bergamino (she/her) is an award-winning queer femme writer and teaching artist who makes her home on the lands of the Coast Salish and Duwamish peoples, known by settlers as Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Girlhood x a Haunting (Driftwood Press, 2025), UNMANNED (Noemi Books, 2018) and chapbooks from Sundress Publications and dancing girl press. She earned her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing with a Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies from the University of Utah, where she held Steffenson-Cannon and Francis Camoin fellowships. Her writing has received support from Hedgebrook, Mineral School, The Community of Writers, and the Taft-NIcholson Center for the Humanities.


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.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: That Infinite Roar by Laurie Kuntz

This selection, chosen by guest editor Shira Haus, is from That Infinite Roar by Laurie Kuntz (Gyroscope Press, 2023).

The Freedom from Being Beautiful

                                               after a line in the poem
                                                                   Menopause by C. Prudence Arceneaux


All that work:

The manicured body,
replenished skin,
and the avoidance of the syrupy desires, 
the lusting glow of everything bronze.

Hair managed, eyes shadowed, 
the arched and high cheekbone turning 
into the right angle, away from the sun,
and anything else that might burn through the work.

The nightly rituals, the glossy cover photo
touched up, but never touched, never knowing
the comfort of what can be discovered 
in the uncovering of one’s uncharted skin.

Laurie Kuntz is an award-winning poet and film producer. She taught creative writing and poetry in Japan, Thailand and the Philippines. Many of her poetic themes are a result of her working with Southeast Asian refugees in refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines for over a decade after the Vietnam War years. She holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College.
She has published six poetry collections: That Infinite Roar, Talking Me Off The Roof, The Moon Over My Mother’s House, Simple Gestures, Women at the Onsen, and Somewhere in the Telling. Her book, Simple Gestures, won the Texas Review Poetry Chapbook Contest, and Women at the Onsen won the Blue Light Press Chapbook Contest.
She has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and two Best of the Net Prizes. Her work has been published in Gyroscope Review, Roanoke Review, Third Wednesday, OneArt, Sheila Na Gig, The Bloomsbury Review, The MacGuffin, The Louisville Review, The Charlotte Poetry Review, The Roanoke Review, The Southern Review, The New Virginia Review, The South Florida Review, and many other literary journals and anthologies.
She produced the documentaries, Do Tell, on the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Law, and Strangers to Peace, a documentary on the Colombian peace process and reintegration of guerrilla soldiers in Colombia.
She has been writing poetry since she could hold a pen. She currently resides in Florida, where every day is a political poem waiting to be written. Retired, she lives in an endless summer state of mind.


Shira Leah Haus (she/her) is a queer, antizionist Jewish writer from Michigan. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, and wildness, among others. She has received support from the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and placed third in the 2024 Pinch Literary Awards for poetry.