“Praying for Rain” by Daniel B. Summerhill Posted in: Poems – Tags: Daniel B. Summerhill
Praying for Rain
By Daniel B. Summerhill
Selected by Ama Codjoe
after Nikky Finney
i first want to say: we are dancing
in this rain. the water,
kaleidoscope of color
ricocheting off our backs and falling
to the sneaker-beaten concrete. the rift,
the shout. ain’t no music, but the blues
inside our waterlogged heads,
but we in sync anyway and anyway,
the spin, the wind follows—
on this 40th night, we still ain’t quake
this metronomic storm off, so we antagonize
zeus and all his fair-skinned homies
until the sky cracks enough
to let the light through—
Originally published in Callaloo, 2024
Daniel B. Summerhill is a poet and essayist from Oakland, CA. He is the author of Divine, Divine, Divine and Mausoleum of Flowers. A fellow of Baldwin for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Watering Hole, and elsewhere, his work has been published widely, including Poem-a-Day, Obsidian, Ploughshares, and Callaloo. Winner of the 2023 Indiana Review 1/2K Prize and the inaugural Rumpus Prize for Nonfiction, Daniel is an Associate Professor of Poetry at Santa Clara University and believes in the liberation of oppressed peoples everywhere, especially through the dissolution of empire.