BIO
Emily Pérez is the author of House of Sugar, House of Stone and Backyard Migration Route. She earned an MFA at the University of Houston, where she served as a poetry editor for Gulf Coast and taught with Writers in the Schools. A Canto Mundo fellow, her poems have appeared in journals including POETRY, Diode, Bennington Review, Borderlands, and DIAGRAM. She teaches English and Gender Studies in Denver where she lives with her husband and sons.
www.emilyperez.org
@budlemon
Aftermath
On the
roof, with static on repeat,
I watch
as raccoons scour the yard.
The news
like a minor chord
in an
empty church, hanging.
Today
when my students learn
of the
shooting, they won’t look
up from
their books. “In a school?”
one will
ask. The world they’ve grown in.
The
night does not feel like December
or
respite. More like wet wool
wound
tight round my throat. A crash,
and the
alley’s a riot of garbage.
I envy
the scavengers, their trash
into
treasure. Their unflinching gaze.
Lockdown, 1st grade
Mom, we
had to hide
Mom, it
was a game
It
wasn’t like a normal game
The man
outside was hunting
The man
outside was seeking
The
teacher turned out all the lights
and we
did hugs and bubbles
Hugs
around ourselves, and bubbles in our mouths
We could
not let them pop
We did
not make a peep We curled up
just
like this in balls beside the cubbies
We were
chickens in a nest, no we were babies
in their
eggs We watched the crack
under
the door to see his feet We listened
for his
legs to walk And when we heard we held
our
breath We held it for a long time
It
wasn’t like the last time
The
teacher told us if we won
we’d get
a prize, we’d celebrate
But she
forgot and we just got to breathe
When he comes
And he
will come.
He will
be one of ours
hardened
in the forge
of dinner
tables
and
bedtime stories.
He’ll
have shot up
like a
sapling
grown drunk
under
his
personal sun and purified
water, a
boy in man’s armor
arms and
hands grasping
at
what’s his to master
his to
grope and to finger
like soft
bills in a fold.
To hunt
and to have and to hold
in a
headlock.
His to
plunder.
His to
shiver and shake.
He will
quiver
his arrow
into the fray.
He will
come for us
from us.
For our own.
Wrung from
our own useless
worshipful
hands.