Karla Linn Merrifield

How Thin the Tissue between Past and Present

Karla Linn Merrifield

butterfly-wing fragile one blink I am in my study writing amid the clutter of lives on paper in the company of a brown bat partaking warmth small rent in the fabric of his webbing his small mammal heart throbbing from the effort of crawling wicker basket to space heater shelter closer to me red-blooded companion

another blink I am in another book-lined room fifty years ago shelves towering over me teen tryst in the stacks necking petting rubbing his groin on my pelvis spines of oversized volumes pressing into my spine no librarian no patron no voyeur but the dust-cover odalisque by Picasso who looked like me

Karla Linn Merrifield Karla Linn Merrifield has had 900+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 14 books to her credit. Following her 2018 Psyche’s Scroll (Poetry Box Select) is the 2019 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).