This post makes my skin crawl.

I hate the word "moist."  I hate the way the mouth forms when it's spoken.  It reminds me of those skeevy men who lean out of their trucks, honk and blow kisses as they drive past and make me want to yell, "I'm walking here!"  "Moist" is blood and stickiness.  It is also cottonmouth.  Someone who moistens his lips is unsure of himself and therefore unattractive.  He probably has chapped lips.

These are all irrational things, like when I think of the word "Amsterdam" I think of the color orange.  But there are two instances when I can deal with "moist."  One is in the description of a cake, because I love cake more than I hate "moist."  The other is in poetry, because as much as I loathe the word, it evokes a strong reaction in me.  That is what I want out of poems, and that is the most I can handle with "moist."  This poem by Sharon Olds is the perfect example:

35/10

Brushing out our daughter’s brown
silken hair before the mirror
I see the grey gleaming on my head,
the silver-haired servant behind her. Why is it
just as we begin to go
they begin to arrive, the fold in my neck
clarifying as the fine bones of her
hips sharpen? As my skin shows
its dry pitting, she opens like a moist
precise flower on the tip of a cactus;
as my last chances to bear a child
are falling through my body, the duds among them,
her full purse of eggs, round and
firm as hard-boiled yolks, is about
to snap its clasp. I brush her tangled
fragrant hair at bedtime. It’s an old
story—the oldest we have on our planet—
the story of replacement.