Kelly-DeWitt

Van Gogh, Landscape At Twilight*

A feverflower and toadflax shine 

laid on in strokes like agitated flocks
of birds fanning out behind the layer of visible 

twilight. Wheat and marigold colors. An ochre 
road bisects the fields and ends where sight does 

in two pinched-off nubs, like short dark strings Atropos
will soon cut off. (The same road painted by another 

could brighten again at sunrise, might continue on
through the tangled fig-violet thicket he has wedged 

at the horizon beyond the iris roof of the chateau 

between pear trees.) Someone leans through a window 

gone long ago to ruin, in the musk of evening's damp
grain and floral scents. A single quick stroke of ivory 

black conceals her figure in a sunless brick 
of shadow. We see - or imagine we do - 

how one bare arm stretches deliciously into the oncoming
night, into the racket of blue flies, while the sun turns 

everything to fire again, then dies. 

(That blue roof still holds steady against the torrent of sky.) 

* - forthcoming in The Book of Insects (Spruce Street Press)

Chagall's Bride and Groom*

Her gown is hooped
like a Conestoga; 

she wishes
he had traded it 

for a sensible
parachute. 

The wind 
from an orange star 

drags her
wedding veil. 

The groom's head
pivots, nearly 

tugged off. His hair
is the shiny color 

of tuxedoes. 
But she is tired of his 

face like a chalk
boutonniere, 

how he stares backward
like her mother 

at the earth below, 
vaguely 

dotted with primroses -
she wishes he would let go 

the white stem
of her wrist! 

* - from Iris

Susan Kelly-DeWitt is poet and painter who holds a B.A. and M.A. from CSU Sacramento. She has exhibited her art at Excentrique Gallery, SMUD Gallery, Matrix Gallery, Phoenix Gallery, Blooming Art, Original Works, Peach Pit/Barton Gallery, State Capitol Cafeteria Gallery, Archival Framing, Accurate Art Gallery, Sutter Creek, Winkler Gallery and Davis Art Center. She is a past recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship for Poetry from Stanford University. She has published four collections of poetry; her work also appears in many national anthologies and journals.