Poetry Fiction Issue Atlantic Monthly

The Believer

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I hadn’t wanted to believe myself
Numbered among the unlucky ones.
There’d always seemed an arrogance in that
Of which my superstition made me wary.
Nor was the title very accurate.
In fact it seemed a blessing or a talent
Sometimes, or its own kind of deeper luck,
The way I walked into each suffering
Which was its own intricate world complete
With wild children wrangling to be king
Of every broken square of concrete
And market stalls of shrimp kept cool on ice
Whose infinitesimal limbs caught light
As if hauled glittering into genesis.

Danielle Chapman is a poet and critic living in Chicago. Her writing appears regularly in Poetry and The Chicago Tribune.