Chemosh, God of the Moabites, Required Human Sacrifice
Renee Emerson
In my country, there are no eldest sons or daughters. “Test-Babies”, culled at the start, fire-licked, counted dead at conception.
Already there is more than space for you in our lives—there is hunger, the empty page you will write your small body across.
We consider names for you, we sew your clothes. I am not willing, like my mother, my sisters, though they consider me moreso, given over to the wanderings of a widow-woman, of a people not my own
Each year of you a praise hymn, a snatch from the fire, my hands again raised in giving.
Renee Emerson is the author of Keeping Me Still, a collection of poetry published by Winter Goose in 2014. Her poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Indiana Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, and others. Emerson teaches at Shorter University and lives in Arkansas with her husband and daughters.