Hammers you into
the ground. You’re
down there a year,
then, don’t rise, but
claw out, red clay
to the part in your
hair. No travelogue
to pen. You’re still
a cracked window,
but the light, finally,
streams in, so you
lean over the sink
swallowing water,
glass by cold glass.
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 Poetry Northwest, Ninth Letter, The Common, 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.