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 is the author of Mud In Our Mouths (forthcoming from Northwestern University Press) and Look Alive (winner of the 2019 Cowles Poetry Book Prize from Southeast Missouri State University Press), along with numerous chapbooks, most recently Familiar (Madhouse Press, 2024) and The Undead (winner of Sixth Finch Books’ 2020 Chapbook Contest). Her poetry can be found in Fugue, Five Points, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. She serves as a Poetry Editor for the Whiting Award–winning LGBTQIA2S+ literary journal and press Foglifter.