Jesus Fishing the Styx
after Chadwick
Occasionally from the corner of his
eye he sees the splash,
Circles showing where briefly the
dead have surfaced
Their wide round eyes filling their
foreheads with baleful no-hope
Jesus rears back his arm, then whips
the pole, the line forming
the shape of the water
cycle itself
As the lure flies forth at the speed
of evernow;
It lands on the water, he pulls it back,
and lands thee.
Theric Jepson is author of the novel Byuck and many shorter works, some of which have appeared at Psaltery & Lyre. This poem is part of a forthcoming chapbook inspired by the language in Tyler Chadwick’s Field Notes on Language and Kinship.Meet him online by googling thmazing and seeing where that leads you.
Read more of Jepson’s poetry here.