Susan Kelly-DeWitt: California Poets Part 9, Four Poems

Susan Kelly-DeWitt

December 22nd, 2025

California Poets: Part IX

Susan Kelly-DeWitt

Four Poems

Anniversary

We were married in Santa Barbara in June.

We didn’t know your heart was stressed,

that on the night of our sixteenth moon

I would dial 911, then watch (obsessed)

your labored breath and those whiplashed snakes

of green on the oscilloscope screen--moot

wife, little plastic bride of the disappeared cake.

The surgery was graveyard-shift, the scar a beaut

(like your wired sternum). We watched outtakes of Garbo

on ICU TV. I felt like the widow in a Noh play--

long loose hair, strain-powdered face; a hobo

riding the emotion-rails. Now that fraught day

was fifty years ago--our love was no rhinestone.

(I still feel the pain, smell your blood-cologne.)

The Wasp

I find my way in

through a chink in the screen

with my venoms and poisons.

I fly past their bed

with my glittering head.

With one black-gold eye

I watch how they sigh, old lovers

in a stupor—how they twist and turn

in the sultry afternoon.

I drift like a vapor

to an alley of shade

and gleam there like black jade.

Blue Hotel

if I say the world is all one story

a cluster of crazy ground floor rooms

annexed to a cheap hotel

a series of odd angles

roofed in blue tiles

bear with me

I’m learning to trust myself

not myself but the shadow

that breathes inside me

I’m learning to wander the halls

jiggle the doorknobs

which are painted blue

imagination is the central garden

there is a fountain there

I’m letting the waters splash over me

my hair is wet

my skin is soaked

my shirt is drenched

my blue shirt

three blue pigeons are pecking

at the fountain’s edge

blue feathers blue beaks

bear with me I know

sadness is the roof of the crazy world

and blue can be read as the color of dolor

but this is not a sad poem

this poem has opened a window

inside the blue hotel

it has let the sky rush in

a clear blue sky

Working Retail

In an early definition of strip

malls, I was in charge

of ladies’ coats.

It was pre-pre-

Christmas sales, halfway

through a busy night.

The news arrived

on the sales floor

in the form of my manager—

my father had been dressed

down by heart attack.

The rest of the night

was a blur of selling

myself on the idea

of the reality of his death

and a foggy three hour

drive to the mortuary.

Then I saw his new

blue-violet topcoat.

I touched his cold

new threads.

Author Bio:

Sacramento’s Susan Kelly-DeWitt is the inaugural poet in the California Poets Series with her book Gatherer’s Alphabet (February 2022). In 2024, Gunpowder Press also published Frangible Operas. Susan is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow and the author of Gravitational Tug (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2020), Spider Season (Cold River Press, 2016), The Fortunate Islands (Marick Press, 2008), and a number of previous small press and online collections. Her work has also appeared in many anthologies, and in print and online journals at home and abroad. Her past professional and writing life includes having been a reviewer for Library Journal, the editor-in-chief of the online journal Perihelion, the Program Director of the Sacramento Poetry Center and the Women’s Wisdom Arts Program, a Poet in the Schools and a Poet in the Prisons, a blogger for Coal Hill Review, and a longtime instructor for the UC Davis Division of Continuing Education. She is currently a member of the National Book Critics Circle, the Northern California Book Reviewers Association and a contributing editor for Poetry Flash. She is also an exhibiting visual artist. For more information, please visit her website at www.susankelly-dewitt.com.