Karla Linn Merrifield
Duane’s Blues
Come, let us go forth,
playing arpeggios in the morning.
Let us be Allman sky-dogging it
and goin’ down slow
before we have to finger
your “Goodbye, Again” composition
Let us perhaps find
the cerebral opening
to quake the crazy shit
in between us together.
If you don’t have 23 chords,
you don’t have a jazzy song,
I’ll be your squish mama
cuz our ears are likewise analog
no matter our improvised
our enjambment
in turnaround music,
where jazz is in your DNA.
And my heart swells with golden light
of love thrown down in the blues rub.
About the writer:
A nine-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, Karla Linn Merrifield has had over 500 poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. Karla Linn Merrifield has 14 books to her credit and is currently completing two new poetry books being published in 2021: Half a World of Kisses from Truth Serum Press under its new Lindauer Poets imprint; and My Body the Guitar, from Before Your Quiet Eyes Holograph Series.
Image: Recueil des modes de la cour de France, ‘Flautin’ by Nicolas Bonnart (1637-1717). Hand-colored engraving on paper (Sheet: 14 3/8 x 9 3/8 inches; Composition: 10 3/8 x 7 3/8 inches. Circa 1678-1693. Public domain.
