Vox Populi
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Susan Kelly-DeWitt: Photograph of Your Father Sewing Needlepoint At Precinct Headquarters, 1956
His athletic body tilted back, his big tired "dogs" in their polished wing-tips propped up on the cluttered desk. At ease-- stocky index and thumb tugging the yarn taut, as though it was the most natural thing in the world for a burly detective, a tough Irish cop in 1950’s New York, to design and sew needlepoint cushions for the parlor chairs when only hours before, as the department's crime scene photographer, he’d snapped the cold postures brutality crafts—all the horrors he hoped with every fiber of his being you would never see.
Copyright 2022 Susan Kelly-DeWitt
Susan Kelly-DeWitt’s many books include Gatherer’s Alphabet (Gunpowder Press, 2022). She lives in Sacramento, California.
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Compact and dense with depth and clarity. Great poem!
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Thanks, Allison. I agree!
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A wonderful portrait of a man totally at ease in his masculinity, so deftly and quickly showing many-sides of him.
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Thanks, Mary, I agree!
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What a portrait! That “burly” man doing needlepoint! Fabulous!
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I agree, Laure-Anne. The poem has wonderfully chosen details.
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This is so good!
Thank you
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Thanks, Sean!
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