Fishing Prayer

I am not dead yet.

My bare feet scale
shiny pocked
blue volcanic
rocks the floods have salved
into familiar shale

and between the pale
sand stripes
a rock’s black oil
crinkles at my heel.

Every dimple reveals
the universe within
these stones is sound.

Let me clench all pain
on to this line
and let it down
into that starry stone.

Let me draw a sunfish
out of the Absolute
alone.

Let foil freckles
muscle its middle
as fire flexes gases
through a star.

Let me grasp its fins’
prehistoric axes
till their transparent
spires splice

the aren’t
from who You are.

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Danielle Chapman

Danielle Chapman is the author of Delinquent Palaces (Northwestern University Press, 2015). Her essays and criticism can be found in The Oxford American, Commonweal, and Poetry. She teaches Shakespeare and creative writing at Yale.

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Author: Danielle Chapman

Danielle Chapman is the author of Delinquent Palaces (Northwestern University Press, 2015). Her essays and criticism can be found in The Oxford American, Commonweal, and Poetry. She teaches Shakespeare and creative writing at Yale. View all posts by Danielle Chapman