Shake your bedding before retiring
shake your shoes every morning
replenish often your repellant
show reasonable sense about jungle fever
and expect you will have to learn
to deal with it, particularly it—
the stinging insects—
of spiny caterpillars beware, beware
a host of small arthropods
a host of minute warnings or suffer
raging complex itches
supernatural pain
fungus joins the chiggers,
fire ants, wasps, mosquitoes
as the hell-hot rainforest rots
your feet are wet
always.
Poem by Karla Linn Merrifield
Karla Linn Merrifield has had 900+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies, with 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. 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). http://karlalinn.blogspot.com