Who Says April Is the Cruelest? by Amanda Merpaw

October 3, 2022
Poem name: Who Says April Is the Cruelest? Poet name: Amanda Merpaw Poem: i don’t believe in ghosts usually except the fog frost from my mouth on the boardwalk over the lake fumbling them forward sometimes you have to believe in something like when November leeches across your tongue and finds them there digging esophageal trenches cracked roots rotting winter dead clinging which part of this the exorcism which part of this the haunting End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Amanda Merpaw Previously published in Literary Review of Canada, 2017. Amanda Merpaw (she/her) is a poet, writer, editor, researcher, and educator. Her writing has appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, CV2, Grain, Literary Review of Canada, The Maynard, Pathways, Prairie Fire, PRISM International, and Room. She was shortlisted for Arc Poetry Magazine’s 2022 Poem of the Year Contest. Her first chapbook, Put the Ghosts Down Between Us, was released in September 2021 by Anstruther Press and her debut poetry collection is forthcoming from Palimpsest Press in Spring 2024. She is currently a contributing editor at Arc Poetry Magazine and a member of the editorial board at Anstruther Press.