Smitten thoughts
girl she’s rapturing
smitten thoughts
about me I gots
smileyhalos above

I gots me a smitten girl
smitten over me
whammy-bar girl
string-bending me
with her pickups smitten

my smitten girl sure
to soon be amplified
for me a night plugged
into her smitten hold on me
my grasp she do electrify

when my zizzy-smitten girl’s
upped completely top-volume—reverb
within me upping my heart’s pumping—
newly smitten gal I play you
play you play you also jazzy melodies

smitten girl mine tune in

Karla Linn Merrifield, a nine-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, has had 700+ 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 newly released full-length book Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far North from Cirque Press. Her Godwit: Poems of Canada (FootHills Publishing) received the Eiseman Award for Poetry. She is a frequent contributor to The Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, and assistant editor and poetry book reviewer emerita for The Centrifugal Eye.