Susan Kelly-DeWitt

 

Summer Solstice

Morning heats up
like a topaz jewel.
By noon the matchstick

grasses look like beaten
gold if you squint
against the June sheen.

Once you touched the burning
plexus, the naked fiery hive
of tormented passion alive

inside the body of another
summer, and lived. 

 

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Instructions from My Double

Snag the day’s plush,
_____its seedy glitter,
__________those morsels packed
_____with juice. Sponge in
flecks of goldfish

_____shimmer. Filch
__________cobwebs of dusk;
_______________rummage
__________the rain. Jasmine, tuberose,
_____gardenias, snakes,

asphalt, soot—
_____poke your nose
__________into their perfume.
_____Buildings puffing
fat smokestack cigs;

_____tangerine fingernails,
__________mango computer screens,
_______________dreams. Scraps, rags,
__________electric tubing,
_____all mixed together

with wire and pencils,
_____with mayonnaise jars,
__________with shaving cream mornings
_____and rude awakenings—
words stuffed up

_____your ratty sleeves,
__________moth-light in your eyes.

 

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Susan Kelly-DeWitt (Advisory Editor) is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow and the author of Gatherer’s Alphabet (California Poets Series, Gunpowder Press, 2022) Gravitational Tug (Main Street Rag, 2020), Spider Season (Cold River Press, 2016), The Fortunate Islands (Marick Press, 2008) and nine previous small press and online collections.  Her work has also appeared in many anthologies, and in print and online journals at home and abroad. She is also an exhibiting visual artist. For more information, please visit her website: www.susankelly-dewitt.com