“Prayer” by Whitney Waters (Poetry ’23)

Prayer

Let them dream a feast:
spinach artichoke to dip
their long legs in, watermelon
flesh and strawberries’ sweet
nectar on their mandibles, funk
of apples fermenting beneath trees.
They’d get drunk
on beer and white wine, fly
in dazed circles into the prismatic
sky. Fizz of sugar in the glass—
swell and release. Their mothers

would still be alive.