#1, #63: Last Request to Alpha and Omega

By Karla Linn Merrifield

#1, #63: Last Request to Alpha and Omega

When I die,
have the coroner
remove my pelvic girdle,
bones of hip—
       ilium
       ischium
       pubis—
fused, luckily for you two:
bowl of my body
that bore your weight
more joyously than birthing.
Cremate the remains of me,
except those three remnants
that cradled the viscera you relished.
Remember my
       vulva
       labia
       clitoris
       vagina
my passage to release
held within that sturdy vessel.
Together, consult a taxidermist.
Let him strip my hot bed
of wet velvet bliss down
to its mineral salts.
Return. (Together.) Pony up.
Exit to parking lot with the nexus
of my lust in a plastic grocery bag.
Extract the thing, each hip a wing
that knew your urgencies.
Crack it apart. Go ahead!
Remember how brittle I’d been until:
You. Your: Touch. Voice. Scent. Beauty. Spice.
Jam the holy broken ossa back in the sack.
Toss it in a dumpster.
But—then—hold all of me
in the genizah of your living heart.

Karla Linn Merrifield is a nine-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence. She has had over 1,00 poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has eleven books to her credit, including My Body the Guitar, published in December 2021. Her poem “See: Love” was a finalist for the 2015 Pangaea Prize. She was a member of Just Poets board of directors (Rochester, NY) for several years, and is a member of the New Mexico State Poetry Society, and the Florida State Poetry Society.