PRAYER CHAIN

Photo from Unsplash.

Photo from Unsplash.

Upstairs my children sleeping
in silence wrung from night hours,
the lamplight a cloak, I pray each name,
earnest and fearful, I pray for wars,
their endings and beginnings.

I can ask what I ask
He will give what He gives.

My neighbor dies of cancer, a gunman
in a synagogue; the trees turn colors slowly
this year, we pay all our bills on time.

A note in the planner next to a chore,
an appointment, prayer becomes both
and neither, pray, pray that life
changes and stays the same, pick it over
like fruit at market, hold the bruises up to God. 

 

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Renee Emerson

Renee Emerson is a homeschooling mom of six, and the author of Church Ladies (forthcoming from Fernwood Press, 2022), Threshing Floor (Jacar Press, 2016), and Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing, 2014). Her poetry has been published in Cumberland River Review, Windhover, and Poetry South. She adjunct teaches online for Indiana Wesleyan University, and blogs about poetry, grief, and motherhood at www.reneeemerson.wordpress.com.

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ON HIDEOUSNESS, PART ONE

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5 CHURCH THINGS THAT SEEM EDIBLE BUT AREN’T