Karla Linn Merrifield has had 1000+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies, including throughout the UK. She has 14 books to her credit. Following her 2018 Psyche’s Scroll (Poetry Box Select) is the full-length book Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far North from Cirque Press. She is currently at work on a poetry collection, My Body the Guitar, inspired by famous guitarists and their guitars; the book is slated to be published in December 2021 by Before Your Quiet Eyes Publications Holograph Series (Rochester, NY). Web site: https://www.karlalinnmerrifield.org/; blog at https://karlalinnmerrifeld.wordpress.com/; Tweet @LinnMerrifiel; Instagram: https://www.facebook.com/karlalinn.merrifield.
Chapbooks
Chapbooks available on Karla’s website
Spies in the county park of plentiful Florida
undertake reconnaissance at the communal water spigot.
Two kids, girl, boy, then their 30-ish dad scurry
like gray squirrels in disguise as humans. A
nd, like common indigenous rodents, affect
nonchalance when washing paws of forest detritus.
One furtive glance with beady eye on me,
camper in the blue Eureka!® tent across
the sandy path on #10, one quick sniff of vanilla,
and they scamper away, chattering, mam, mama,
here’s a woman alone over there, alone, alone.
The Place of Purpose
A day at my disposal I spend
to remember again this is for keeps;
you are married to a mystery.
I am fully employed as hard laborer
as in cane fields, earning my payload
of words penetrating boredom’s burden.
Even when frozen fingers must thaw
the disappearing ink, even when sun-scabbed hands
must salvage the page of ephemerality,
I show up. I show up on Time,
knotted nylon socks as a headband against
salt of perspiration, of tears, in my eyes.
On ice, in fire, muscular limes stir cauldrons
of fuel and syrup to illuminate sweetened dreams.