Today's poem is by Susan Kelly-DeWitt

Diane Arbus: Two Ladies at the Automat
       

They pose with the sugar
jar, a sweetness
like the cane's

white death.
          Les Demoiselles
D' Automat.

The one with the fake
Russian hat scrunched
over her pageboy points

a pearly fingernail
to hell, or else

she is tapping
a filed-down message
in personal Morse

(like inmates rap)
through smears of Cremora:

Dear Mama:
Look how our lives keep
going on without you.

Copyright © 2024 Susan Kelly-DeWitt All rights reserved
from Frangible Operas
Gunpowder Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission